Clumpy hair particle issues

So I got a a model (namely one of the Sintel models from Blendswap), and I’ve come across this issue.

Now this is just the eyelashes, but the issue isn’t just limited to the eyelashes- the hair and eyebrows also have this issue. I’ve tried everything to fix it, from decreasing the length, to cutting down the children count, to even redoing them from scratch, but I’m not getting any better results from my efforts. Is there anyway to fix it?

For frame of reference, I’m using 2.79, the model I got was made in 2.57, so I don’t know if it’s incompatibility issues or just something else entirely.

I think the hair is too thick!

Problem with that is it won’t let me edit it without destroying the already existing style.