For the second year in a row, Emporia State has “canned the Bods” and won the annual food drive competition against Washburn. The results were announced last Saturday at the football game between Washburn and ESU.

ESU gathered 39,548 cans to beat Washburn’s approximate 17,000 cans, said Brooke Schmidt, senior Spanish major and Associated Student Government president. Cans gathered during the event were donated to the Salvation Army food pantry.

“I think everybody was just really pumped up about it,” Schmidt said. “We did a lot of marketing, I think, than we’ve done in the past and we partnered with a lot more organizations.”

Schmidt said the victory was a group effort stemming from partnerships not only with Recognized Student Organizations on campus, but also with the community. Among the groups that ASG partnered with were Sigma Alpha Lambda (SAL), the leadership honor society; the Memorial Union bookstore; the athletic department; Residential Life, and they even received a food grant from Walmart.

RSOs had their own competition within the Can the Bods event to see which organization could gather the most cans. SAL came out as the winner, raising 7,303 cans, said Tim Thomas, senior crime and delinquency studies major and president of SAL.

“It is truly about the advancement of other people, and that’s what I care about – seeing people develop, grow and know that someone out there cares about them and actually loves them,” Thomas said.

Thomas said that SAL’s success was due to a number of factors, including members donating cans, community involvement in the project and partnership with other groups. He also said group collected $100, which was used to purchase more food for the drive.

“We didn’t do it by ourselves,” Thomas said. “I thank all the RSOs who helped with that, and the fellow student body, as well as the outside organizations, such as the churches and businesses, as well as the community.”

The Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority raised the most cans among the Greek community with a total of 183, said Danae Coffee, junior economics major and philanthropy chair for ASA. This is ASA’s second consecutive year winning the Greek portion of the drive.

“We are really excited to make an impact on the Emporia community,” Coffee said. “We believe that life is not taking in only, it is giving out, too. We have a passion and drive for community service and are excited the whole campus can see our efforts.”

Coffee said ASA had a competition within their chapter to see which group could raise the most cans, and they also did reverse trick-or-treating, where they went door to door asking for cans for the food drive.

Although Can the Bods is over, Schmidt said the campus can look forward to many other ASG sponsored events this school year.

“You can look forward to a lot of stuff being promoted with the 150th (anniversary) coming up next year,” Schmidt said. “The student body has a lot to look forward to, seeing some action taking place with ASG…we’re going to try to move forward, and I think we’re going to try to do a lot more community service in this upcoming semester.”