DeKALB | Students came out to the College Grind in the Holmes Student Center to carve bold and festive Halloween pumpkins. It was a B-Y-O-P, bring-your-own-pumpkin, event — unless students arrived early.

The Holmes Student Center program committee hosted its second annual pumpkin carving event Friday, and while they had high hopes for attendance, they were blown away by the amount of support and participation they received from more than 30 attendees .

The group hosted this event around the same time last year, but didn’t get as many students to come out to support the event. Kimberly Manno, senior elementary education major and Holmes Student Center marketing student manager, said there were five people that attended the event last year and this year the 30 free pumpkins that were given at the beginning of the event were claimed in a the first three minutes.

Manno said the event is very necessary for campus, and the mission of the planned events for the Holmes Student Center is to give students things to do and events to attend.

“Everyone says that there’s nothing ever to do besides drinking or partying,” Manno said. “Our goal is to make fun, safe events for students to participate in on various days of the week so they can always have something to do.”

Junior finance major Michael Orea said he’s new to the Holmes Student Center production team, but with each event, he can see the crowd grow more and more.

“I was hoping that all of the pumpkins would be gone in the first hour or so,” Orea said. “But to see so many people come in right at the start of the event, it felt pretty cool.”

Sophomore French major Ashlei Cole said she attended the event to get her New Hall residents involved in an on-campus event as a way for them to have fun and bond.

“I was really surprised to see so many people come out, but I’m also really glad people are taking the initiative to get involved with events [NIU] has,” Cole said.