NC State’s Rho Chapter of Sigma Pi raised more than $12,000 for the NC State Counseling Center at its fifth annual Break the Silence 5K run for suicide prevention and awareness Saturday on Centennial Campus. 

Beating last year’s fundraising total by more than $4,000, Saturday’s run was Sigma Pi’s most successful in terms of donations and participants in the event’s five-year history. 

“The event raised over $11,000 in donations with more coming in each day,” said Dylan Ebert, Sigma Pi’s philanthropy chair and a sophomore studying psychology. 

The Break the Silence 5K was created in 2011 in honor of Marc Haege, a former Sigma Pi brother, who was a junior at NC State when took his own life in 2010. 

All of the profit from donations went to the NC State Counseling Center, Ebert said. 

Beyond supporting the Counseling Center, the event aimed to raise awareness of the stigma surrounding mental health.

Ebert said this year’s success was due to the effort the brothers put in to get attention for the event. 

“I have to credit my brothers who promoted the event so well, but really I believe that everybody recognized how important this cause is and decided to help,” Ebert said.

Despite its success, all of the controversy surrounding NC State’s Greek life made advertising and fundraising for this year’s event more difficult than usual, Ebert said. 

After five allegations of misconduct from fraternities at NC State this academic year and numerous instances of racism and sexual assault allegations that have recently stemmed from fraternities across the country, Ebert said it was difficult to get sponsors to look past the poor image that both NC State and national fraternities have garnered. 

“This year wasn’t the smoothest,” Ebert said.

David Letteney, the president of NC State’s chapter of Sigma Pi and a senior studying chemical engineering said with the lack of media outlets present at the event, it is easy to feel as if the philanthropic donations generated by fraternities are often overlooked. 

“It’s a lot easier for the media to report on allegations of misconduct,” Letteney said. “We are glad to be able to shed light on the good fraternities do. We hope that our philanthropy will help remind our school and our community of the great work being done by fraternities.”

The Triangle Survivors of Suicide presented the chapter with $2,000 in January for its suicide prevention efforts through its volunteer work in Triangle Survivors of Suicide’s annual “I Will Survive” walk.

The Triangle SOS is a Raleigh-based organization dedicated to raising awareness, preventing suicide and providing a support group for people who have lost loved ones to suicide. 

Sigma Pi’s website has a page dedicated to suicide prevention that describes how people can help those who they think may be suffering from suicidal thoughts and provides a link to the Counseling Center’s website.