sored by Wolverines for Life, 
the American Red Cross, Be The 
Match/National Marrow Donor 
Program, Gift of Life Michigan 
and Eversight Michigan.

This year, Sunday’s “Be a 

Hero” event collected more 
than 400 units of blood, break-
ing last year’s all-time record of 
340 units. All donated blood will 
be included in the University’s 
Blood Battle total.

Throughout the next three 

weeks, Blood Drives United, the 
student-run organization that 
co-sponsors the Blood Battle 
competition, will host about 46 
blood drives at various locations 
around campus.

Ward and Lydia Kimball, 

residents of West Branch, Mich., 
attended the event to promote 
organ donor registration. Their 

18-year-old son, Evan, died in 
a car accident last month, and 
his organs were donated to five 
different recipients. They have 
since started working to educate 
and raise awareness about organ 
donation with Gift of Life Mich-
igan, an organization that works 
to maximize organ and tissue 
donation by registering donors 
and raising awareness.

“I promised him that his 

name would never ever be for-
gotten, and I think with his gifts 
and the spurring of the donor 
registry, that’s how we do that,” 
Kimball said.

Marge Del Greco, a two-time 

liver donation recipient, also 
works with Gift of Life Michi-
gan and helped people register 
as donors at the event.

“This is my way of giving 

back,” Del Greco said. “I pro-
mote wherever I can, however I 
can, to get the word out, and to 
get people to register.”

She said when she received 

her first liver transplant in 
2004, people did not understand 
the necessity of organ dona-
tion. When she first began to 
volunteer she struggled to reg-
ister donors. However, she said 
events like Blood Battle have 
helped raise awareness and 
encourage people to donate.

“Our numbers have tripled,” 

she said. “We’re up to 52 per-
cent of Michigan are registered 
organ donors, and that’s huge 
from where we started. We were 
below the national average, 
below 30 percent of the state.”

LSA junior Laurel Fricker, a 

member of Blood Drives United, 
emphasized the importance of 
donating blood and said events 
like the Blood Battle make 
donating more fun.

“Each donor can save poten-

tially three lives with their 
donation,” she said.

focus on the players’ skills 
instead,” he said.

Engineering sophomore Roy 

Berg, vice president of the SVA, 
echoed Mendicelli’s sentiments. 

Berg, who is also a Marine Corps 
veteran and played for the Navy 
team, said the event illustrates 
the University’s commitment to 
celebrating diversity.

Overall, Hoff said, the event 

is growing every year and he 
hopes continuing it will inspire 
the University and other schools 

within the Big Ten to start 
their own wheelchair athletic 
leagues.

“We’re bringing together vet-

erans, we’re bringing together 
people with disabilities, we’re 
bringing together our student 
population,” he said.

dead with altars decorated with 
pictures, candles and marigold 
flowers.

LSA senior Thalia Maya, 

Lambda Theta Alpha sorority 
president, said the ball was an 
opportunity for the sorority to 
educate other students about 
Dia de los Muertos and Latin 
heritage.

“It’s more than just being 

able to eat good food and be 
able to come together as peo-
ple in the Latin community,” 
Maya said. “It’s being able to 
remember those who have 
passed away, the loved ones and 
friends who were really impor-
tant to us.”

Rackham student Orquidea 

Morales, the event’s keynote 
speaker, said Dia de los Muer-
tos is her favorite holiday. Pur-
suing a doctorate in American 
Culture, Morales said she was 
recommended by her professor 
to speak based on her research 
on death at the border between 
Mexico and the United States.

Morales transferred from the 

University of Texas-Pan Ameri-
can, which has a significantly 
higher Latin population than 

the University of Michigan, 
which has an undergraduate 
Latin population of 4.93 percent.

“It does feel weird walking 

around being one of the few 
Latino students, and knowing 
there’s a really high attrition 
rate when it comes to under-
graduate students of color,” she 
said.

Morales said she wanted to 

do something culturally specific 
this year that would bring vis-
ibility to the Latin community.

Rackham 
student 
Fantasy 

Posada is an alum of Lambda 
Theta Alpha, which was the first 
Latina sorority in the country. 
She painted her face in solidar-
ity with her University sisters 
and to honor the event.

“I’m really proud of the chap-

ter and the programming that 
they do, because it is very much 
about empowerment,” Posada 
said. 
“Empowerment 
of 
all 

women, but of course empower-
ment of Latino women.”

Roberto Perez, the Office of 

Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs 
program manager, said he had 
a positive experience working 
with the sorority and the Michi-
gan Latin@ Assembly to con-
struct the event.

“Reaching out to the (Michi-

gan Latin@ Assembly) orga-

nization, and really getting a 
sense of unity and partnership 
with them has been really well 
received,” Perez said. “Both 
organizations have worked real-
ly well together.”

Perez said LatinX is a term 

used this year to be more inclu-
sive of those whose gender 
expressions are more fluid, act-
ing as an alternative to binary 
words within the Spanish lan-
guage referring to gender iden-
tity.

“(It’s) a term used to be 

more inclusive for those who 
don’t identify within the male/
female binary,” Perez said. “So 
that includes those who might 
identify as queer, transgender 
or cisgender, or anything else 
within the spectrum that isn’t 
very simply identified as male/
female.”

LatinX celebrated the month 

with more than 20 events, 
including a lecture on the cul-
tural and historical tradition 
of the quinceañera, a girl’s 15th 
birthday signifying her transi-
tion into adulthood, and a panel 
discussion where Latina faculty 
members shared their experi-
ences as people of color at the 
University.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Monday, November 2, 2015 — 3A

LATINX
From Page 1A

BLOOD
From Page 1A

KRISTINA PERKINS/Daily

Kim Roman, volunteer with Team Michigan of the Transplant Games of America, plays Bubba Blocks at the Blood 
Battle kickoff event at Michigan Stadium on Sunday. 

WHEELCHAIR
From Page 1A

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daily

Labuz echoed his sentiments, 
and said their project proves 
out-of-the-box thinking can 
often be useful for research.
“A lot of times, both people 
who work on research, and 
also people who don’t, imagine 
that research has to be done 
a certain way, and ideas can 
only come from big complicat-
ed textbooks and long equa-
tions and things like that,” he 
said. “But a lot of times the 
best ideas are the simplest or 
the most obvious ones.”
Takayama said the discovery 
will allow new avenues for 
cell-based research in model-

ing delicate processes.
“It is important technologi-
cally because it enables prac-
tical measurements of forces 
otherwise very difficult to 
perform,” he said.
For this reason, the team has 
decided not to patent the fab-
rication technique, first pub-
lished earlier this year.
“That’s not to say that patents 
or being the first to publish 
or being recognized for being 
the first to discover something 
isn’t important,” Labuz said. 
“But at least the way our lab 
operates is, once we have an 
idea or technique down or val-
idated, we are happy to share 
it with other people.”
Moraes said he hoped that the 
technique can also be lever-

aged beyond the field of sci-
ence, suggesting that it could 
be used to make “smart” or 
“dynamic” candy that was 
customized to specific flavor 
profiles.
Moving forward, he still faced 
a personal challenge: figuring 
out how to make cotton candy 
successfully.
“My last attempt wasn’t nearly 
as horrible as my first, but still 
nowhere near the expert hand-
pulled cotton candy product,” 
he said. “I might switch over 
to trying hand-pulled noodles 
first, which uses a similar 
pulling technique but seems to 
be a little more forgiving than 
candy.”

CANDY
From Page 1A

