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
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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