PRSSA to host 32nd annual Organ Donor Day event

The Rowan University chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) will hold its 32^nd annual Organ Donor Day event April 8 to raise awareness about the importance of organ donorship.

Organizer Brenna Lamon, a senior Public Relations & Advertising major, said the event will be held this year near the owl statue off Meditation Walk on the north side of the Glassboro campus.

“We want to reduce the stigma among some people associated with organ donorship,” Lamon said. “Some think that if they get into a car crash, someone will take them away and sell their organs on the black market, which is not how it works.”

To the contrary, she said, individuals must register to become organ donors, and in New Jersey may do so on their driver’s license. Only upon death may organs be collected so others may live, Lamon said.

“One donor can save up to eight people,” she said. “A single tissue donor may enhance the lives of up to 75.”

Lamon, who said an individual is added to a transplant waiting list every eight minutes in the U.S., became a registered donor when she renewed her license.

She said Rowan’s PRSSA chapter began holding an annual donor awareness day program in the 1990s after chapter founder Anthony J. Fulginiti, now a professor emeritus in the Department of Public Relations & Advertising, received a lifesaving kidney donation from his sister.

Fall cystic fibrosis fundraiser

In addition to the spring organ donor program, the PRSSA chapter held a walkathon in the fall to raise money and awareness about cystic fibrosis. The chapter held that program in memory of student Colette Bleistine, a PRSSA executive board member who died from the disease in 2012.

According to the Mayo Clinic, cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder that causes digestive, respiratory, reproductive and other ailments that can lead to death.

“The best hope for many with the disease is to get a double lung transplant,” said Mairead Markel, a senior public relations major. “Colette was on the double lung transplant list.”

Markel said money raised during the Nov. 6 fundraiser was donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to support efforts to find a cure.

“There currently isn’t one,” she said, “but maybe, with time and resources, there will be.”