The Sigma Nu Fraternity will hold their 34th annual Charity Bowl philanthropy event Tuesday, April 8 at 6:30 p.m. in the Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
Tickets are still available to purchase at the door for $10.
Sigma Nu will face the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity in their full-contact football game.
The event started in support of Ole Miss Football great Chucky Mullins, who was paralyzed in a football game against Vanderbilt in 1989. The fraternity started the Charity Bowl the next year, with Mullins’ blessing to play the game in honor of those who suffer with paralysis.
Each year, Sigma Nu and a Charity Bowl selection committee selects a recipient suffering from paralysis to receive a portion of their donations, with the remainder being divided between the William Magee Center and the Manning Foundation. This year’s recipient is Hannah Johnston, a teacher from Carthage, Miss.
Johnston was on her way to deliver blankets and pillows to some of her students during an ice storm on Jan. 15, 2024, and was hit by an 18-wheeler. After being rushed to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, she was told she had suffered a broken neck and spinal cord injury, which resulted in her being paralyzed from the shoulders down.
The event also consists of a kickoff sorority cheer competition, a homecoming style senior maid ceremony and a full-contact football game. This year, the fraternity raised around $315,000 after 10 months of fundraising. Johnston will receive 275,000, and 25,000 will go to both the William Magee Center and the Manning Foundation.
Fundraising efforts go beyond fraternity members sharing the donate link on their charity bowl website. Active members of the Epsilon Xi chapter reach out to friends, family and Sigma Nu alumni to donate to the cause. On top of member outreach, the fraternity also sells sponsorships for the event that go into the total donation fund. Ticket sales from the event will also add up to the final donation, which will be sold at the door.
The final donation amount raised by the fraternity will be released at a later date following at the door ticket sales.
Sigma Nu President Ben Futvoye, a junior risk management insurance and real estate double major, applauded the Sigma Nu chapter for their fundraising efforts for this year’s event.
“For us, the most important thing is donating to a recipient,” Futvoye said. “Seeing that this recipient is in dire need of care, and knowing that if our chapter pulls together and donates, that we can change the life of someone who will not have access (is rewarding). This year, it’s around $315,000 that we’ve raised (so far).”
Futvoye said that the other chapters’ involvement does not stem from competition, it comes from a place of also wanting to contribute to something more than a football game.
“You can see the extent of it, that spreads throughout campus, when you see somebody’s life get affected in such a way,” Futvoye said. “When we reach out to these other fraternities, they’re not only wanting to donate to play us in the charity bowl, they’re wanting to help out our recipients.”
Sigma Nu’s philanthropy chair, junior public policy leadership major from Newport Beach, Calif., Julian Knott, shared that the chapter involvement in donations has grown into an exciting aspect of the event.
“We’ve been able to see a lot of people get more excited about raising money,” Knott said. “We’ve seen a lot more involvement, and being able to see guys actually excited about raising money and going the extra mile to raise more than what’s expected of them has definitely been a point of growth in the past couple years.”
