Lisa Bernheim / Picture Editor / lb320306@ohiou.edu

Max Laird (left) oversees the flocks of Ohio University students coming to the Athens Beautification Day Saturday. About 250 student volunteers came to clean windows, sweep the streets and pick up cigarette butts.

About 250 students and Athens residents came together Saturday in an effort to clean up the city they share on the third annual Athens Beautification Day.

Volunteers worked from 10 a.m. until about 2 p.m. Saturday sweeping streets, laying mulch, picking up litter and cleaning windows for a total of about 1,000 service hours, according to the organizers’ estimates.

The student turnout for this year’s event was 250, an increase from last year’s 150, and this year’s volunteers worked at 26 projects, up from last year’s nine.

Beautification Day, now run by Student Senate, was started in 2006 by the Ohio men’s water polo team. It was funded by local organizations, which contributed more than $5,000 through donations and sponsorship.

Volunteers represented a wide range of student organizations such as Design Group, Student Senate and the Women’s Affairs Commission.

“Students live here for four-plus years and some of them don’t take advantage of all of the opportunities that Athens has. One of those advantages is how beautiful the city is,” said Max Laird, co-executive director of Beautification Day and member of Student Senate.

Events like Beautification Day bridge the gap that some say exists between OU students and permanent Athens residents, said Doreen Miner, a 21-year Athens resident. Her assignment for the morning was to sweep up discarded cigarettes that pepper most of the sidewalks uptown.

“I never knew there were so many cigarette butts,” Miner said.

Several students worked alongside longtime Athens residents.

Freshman Edie Sigmon worked on a window-washing team led by her resident assistant. Paying special attention to the windows on Brenen’s Coffee Cafe, Sigmon said she was glad to be handling the windows in the collective effort to clean up Athens.

“It’s better than sweeping,” she said.

Away from campus, volunteer groups were working with other community organizations like the American Red Cross and the Athens Historical Society.

Last year a group worked to scrape and paint the exterior of The Dairy Barn Arts Center building, said Andrea Lewis, executive director of The Dairy Barn. This year, volunteers worked to paint the upstairs interior. Lewis said they paint the barn once every few years.