Many schools combine competition with community service. Ball State holds contests for what organization can collect the most food, the most used clothing or do the most community service. This system might boost involvement, but sometimes the motivation to win outweighs the motivation to help people.
That is when competition counteracts community service. Sometimes that can be dangerous. At the University of Missouri-Columbia, Gamma Phi Beta sorority members received an e-mail from a fellow member urging them to give blood, even if it meant lying to qualify.
According to the Associated Press, the chapter's blood donation coordinator sent an e-mail to about 170 members of the sorority. "I dont [sic] care if you got a tattoo last week LIE. I dont [sic] care if you have a cold. Suck it up. We all do. LIE. Recent piercings? LIE."
Pushing these students to lie to the blood donation center has the potential to hurt many people. It could make those who are not supposed to donate very ill. It could also harm people who receive the blood that was inappropriately donated. This does not account for the number of man-hours wasted on testing and processing blood that should not be used. Those hours could be many from this blood drive. The school had a record 3,156 units of blood in one day in 1999. This year's incident might make people wonder how many of those units were actually usable.
The greater purpose for anyone to donate is to help people other than themselves. This sorority member -- along with anyone else who took this ideology with them to the blood bank -- missed the point completely.
Ball State could learn from this situation. The next time a department or an organization sponsors a food, clothing or blood drive, donators should keep their motivations in check.
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