Panther Service Day went on as scheduled Saturday and, despite the lack of many volunteers, it was considered a success.

The day was created for students and other volunteers to help serve the community by cleaning up streets and doing yard work.

Ceci Brinker, director of student life, said Alison Mormino started Panther Service Day five years ago when she was student body president.

“She actually got the idea from her hometown in Alton, Illinois,” she said. “They called it Bucket Brigade over there, which is an annual event, and she thought that there was definitely a need to service the Charleston community here, and she initiated it here.”

The event initially started with just house painting, but Brinker said this was changed, because students were not best suited for the job. The focus instead turned to street cleaning and yard work.

Brinker said the lack of volunteers was because of another major event taking place on the same day.

“Overall, I think our numbers are down, but one of the things we realize now that we didn’t have the foresight of realizing earlier on is when setting a date that this was also the date of Relay for Life,” she said. “So there were a lot of student organizations that typically participate in Panther Service Day that already made that commitment.

“As it got closer to this event, we realized that conflict would hinder how many people would really come out and support this.”

Even though the numbers were down, Brinker said the event was a success. Participants were excited about the number of donations they received.

“We had more sponsors this year, we had more involvement from the local community and we had a couple of youth groups that participated this year,” Brinker said. “So even though our total attendance numbers were down, we feel that we contributed to another major community service project going on at the same time.”

Brinker said extra precautions will be taken in the future to help prevent this mistake from happening again.

“We’ll go back and take a look at it in terms of setting the date for next year and recognize the fact that we’ve got to be mindful of what other things are going on in that same weekend,” she said.

Charleston resident Adam Logston was one participant who wanted to improve the conditions of the streets of the city.

“We’ve been cleaning the streets and picking up trash around Seventh, Eighth and Ninth street,” he said. “We got here around 8 a.m., and I’m just doing it for my own benefit.”

Other local residents like Jeff Barnes were there for other reasons.

“We got dropped off on a street, and we walked down a street and picked up the trash,” he said. “Honestly, I’m doing this for community service because I have 50 hours to do from court.”

Michael Schwader can be reached at 581-7945 or at mwschwader@eiu.edu.