The New York Blood Center, which issued a plea for emergency blood donations on Tuesday, said the response has been “tremendous.” A spokesperson actually asked that Boston donors be patient and not give blood until next week at the earliest.

“We’ve had so many people respond positively that we’re now actually encouraging people…to postpone their donation,” Linda S. Levi said.

Whole blood has a shelf life of six weeks, and donors must wait eight weeks before being eligible to give blood again, Levi said.

The New York Blood Center collected more than 5,000 donations of blood on Tuesday, triple the number collected on an average day. She added that the Center’s inventory has been boosted by 50 percent.

Plans are in the works to hold a four-day, on-campus blood drive during the last week of September at St. Paul’s Church, behind Adams House. The drive is being planned in coordination with the American Red Cross, Rosenthal said.

Responding to the attacks, several campus groups cancelled or postponed meetings. Prefect Nancy J. Chang ’02 said she decided to postpone the first-year mixer “Singled Out” indefinitely. It had been scheduled for yesterday night.

“We postponed it out of respect for the families and students until we think that this tragedy has come to some sort of place where everybody can move on,” Chang said.