Golden Key Honor Society and Theta Xi Fraternity are sponsoring a bone marrow drive Monday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Great Hall at the Memorial Union.

Participation involves watching a 10-minute video that explains the process, signing a form and giving a small amount of blood.

“All they do is prick your finger so they can type your blood and do a couple of basic tests,” said Courtney Martin president of the Golden Key Honor Society. There is no guarantee a participant in this event will be called to donate.

“There is a 2 percent chance that you might be called again in the next couple of years,” Martin said. “It is actually very rare that they’ll find a match that’s somewhere near here who would need your marrow.”

According to the National Marrow Donor Program Web site, www.marrow.org, there are approximately 3,000 patients searching the database at any given time. As of December 31, 2002 there were more than 4.5 million potential donors on the registry.

More than 15,000 transplants have been performed since December 31, 2002, and 72 percent of those were leukemia patients, according to the Web site.

“There is actually a much greater need for African-Americans to donate because they have the most unique blood,” Martin said. “A lot of other races can donate to other races, but African-Americans can pretty much only get donations from other African-Americans.”

According to the Web site, of the more than 15,000 transplants, only 645 have been to African- Americans, so the need is still great for donors.

Martin said after a certain number of years a donor is often able to meet the individual their marrow was given to.

Golden Key became involved in this program because one of its members had a family member who could benefit from this program and the student brought the idea to the rest of the group.

“It’s hard to find a new cause on a campus of 28,000 students, but we thought this one was definitely worth championing,” Martin said.

The University of Iowa has been doing a similar drive for the past four years and has seen about two hundred people per year.

“We have hopes, we’re not sure what to expect,” Martin said. “But in the interest of keeping the rivalry alive we are expecting to have about that many.”