Nicole Hanson, the DSC Steering Officer for Outreach, explains the DSC’s new resolution on blood drives in this recent GC Advocate article.
“In May 2012, the CUNY Doctoral Students’ Council (DSC) passed a resolution asking the CUNY Graduate Center to cease holding New York Blood Center (NYBC) donation drives on campus property.
The intention wasn’t to shortchange the New York blood supply—quite the contrary. The DSC, like many other organizations, is protesting the Federal Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) unscientific and discriminatory policy of refusing to allow blood donations from men who have had sex with another man even once since 1977. Not only does this policy irrationally prevent many healthy donors from bolstering the blood supply, possibly contributing to blood shortages, it may put CUNY in the difficult legal and moral position of holding on-campus community events which discriminate against a portion of its student body.
If CUNY continues to implicitly support the ban on gay and bisexual male blood by holding on-campus blood drives, it is not actually protecting all of its students; it merely pays lip service to its moral commitment to its students.”
Carry on reading Nicole’s article over at The GC Advocate—and a personal account from Colin Ashley, DSC Co-Chair for Business, of how holding discriminatory events on campus can make CUNY into an unsafe space for its students.
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