The Gift of Life Club at SUNY Oneonta is making a difference in Oneonta and far beyond by organizing and hosting recruitment drives for potential bone marrow donors right on campus.
The group, which has about 40 active members, officially became recognized as a club this semester. Since Gift of Life Oneonta began coordinating donor recruitment drives in 2023, its members have completed 17 drives (two so far this semester) and “swabbed” 898 people, each a potential bone marrow donor.
Every year, about 18,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness (such as blood cancer) for which a stem cell transplant from a donor is the best treatment. But finding a well-matched donor is difficult. That’s where Gift of Life—a nonprofit public bone marrow registry that was founded in 1991—comes in.
All six executive board members of Oneonta’s Gift of Life Club—Cadence Brennan, Callie Stinson, Anthony Genovese, Denise Coby, Alyssa Thompson and Patrick Gillespie—are part of Gift of Life’s official Campus Ambassador Program. As ambassadors, they are given promotional materials needed to coordinate and run on-campus drives, where potential bone marrow donors complete a registration questionnaire and have their cheeks and gums swabbed. These samples are sent to a lab, tested for genetic markers and entered into the national registry, which can be searched by transplant centers and physicians around the world to find matches for patients in dire need of a transplant.
As ambassadors, the students also encourage friends, clubs and other campus organizations to get involved.
“Most people don’t know that they have the power to cure someone’s cancer, and we want to show them how they can give a patient in need the gift of life,” said club President Cadence Brennan, a senior from Niskayuna, N.Y., who is studying Adolescence Education (English). “Our mission as a club is to add as many people to the national bone marrow and stem cell registry as possible and raise awareness for blood cancer.”
Brennan learned about Gift of Life in 2022 when a young girl from her hometown was diagnosed with aplastic anemia and put on the bone marrow transplant list. After learning that the ideal age for a donor is between the ages of 18 and 35, Brennan was inspired to organize a drive of her own at Hunt Union.
“You know you’re involved in something truly special when people from all walks of life join together to work towards a common goal,” she said. “Gift of Life has brought together SUNY Oneonta’s athletes and Greek life, upperclassmen and underclassmen, and different organizations around campus and in the community. At the end of the day, we’re all people looking to make a difference.”
The club has worked closely with SUNY Oneonta’s chapter of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, which has organized Gift of Life drives on campus since 2018. ZBT chapter President Alexander Deiters, a senior Accounting major from Bellport, N.Y., is very familiar with the entire process: In his sophomore year, he “swabbed” while helping to host a donor drive at SUNY Oneonta and was found to be a match for a patient. Deiters completed the required preparations right on campus and successfully donated his stem cells, a process that’s similar to donating blood.
“I am passionate about it because I feel it’s the right thing to do,” said Deiters, who was inspired to get involved because his father had cancer. “Being able to give someone even one more day is a gift, not only to them but their loved ones. … We are optimistic that more of these matches will turn into transplants, and we can’t wait to see everything we can accomplish.”
