Absolutely true! Not only true, but also stated in the booklet on campus safety that Colorado State issues and puts on the Internet. The CSU booklet, just like the Mayo Clinic's Q&A on alcohol poisoning and plenty of other sources, emphasizes that if someone is passed out, medical attention should be sought immediately. CSU's information says call 911, an ambulance, or a university staff member.

CSU's booklet even has a little encouraging commentary that points out that although a passed-out friend may be mad or embarrassed the next day because treatment was sought, at least he or she is alive.

If it was not a typo, 8.0 means She was totally dead with that much Alchohol in Her system.

Whether She was checked on or not just shows that if there was a party going on, then there just might have been Booze there and no one was going to check on her.

This is totally a saddening situation for a lovely person.

Hoping a wake up call is sounded.

there will be a lot of crap in the newsmedia so just wait and see what happens on that end.

Gotta be a typo, Tom.

The original reports here were something like 4.0. Legally intoxicated in Colorado is .8. Now the officials are saying that they're waiting for the toxicology reports -- so it would appear that someone in the Ft. Collins PD or the CSUPD may have opened their mouth a little prematurely.

Just a little alcohol level education... ya'll are getting your decimal places wrong. .08 is the definition of drunk in Michigan (and many states, some are still at .10). I had read that hers was .43.

45 states and the District of Columbia have a .08 BAC per se law —AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CT, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MS, MT, ND, NE, NH, NM, NC, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT, VA, WA, WI and WY. (Updated: Nov. 20th, 2003)

5 states still define intoxicated driving as .10 BAC per se -- the most lenient definition of drunk driving in the industrialized world.

Some info from an alcohol awareness website:
Blood Alcohol Level Affect On Body
0.02 Slight mood changes
0.06 Lowered inhibition, impaired judgement, decreased rational decision-making abilities.
0.08 Legally drunk, deterioration of reaction time and control.
0.15 Impaired balance, movement, and coordination. Difficulty standing, walking, talking.
0.20 Decreased pain and sensation. Erratic emotions.
0.30 Diminished reflexes. Semi-consciousness.
0.40 Loss of consciousness. Very limited reflexes. Anesthetic effects.
0.50 Death.


Caution
Death has been documented to occur at levels as low as 0.35. Remember, each person is different.
Also, the absence of symptoms does not guarantee safe or low blood alcohol levels. With regular drinking a person develops a tolerance to alcohol that will reduce the outward appearance of high blood alcohol levels.

http://www.radford.edu/~kcastleb/bac.html

chart of drinks to blood alcohol level

According to the chart above, a woman had 10 drinks in a short period of time, and weighed between 100 and 120 would be around .43

I think comments in the articles about this being out of character for her are naive. Alcohol deaths occur at all colleges and universities, even those who only take the "cream of the crop" students with very high GPAs and outstanding high school records and those schools all have students who binge drink to dangerous levels. Not only "bad people" or "bad students" binge drink.

I do think they are jumping to conclusions that she was served alchohol at the house. BAC continues to rise after you stop drinking because the alcohol is still being processed through your system.

Dee

Dee,

Clearly, you are correct about the decimal places. Thanks for the post -- it is most useful.

As for the young woman being given alcohol at the house, that is pure speculation, but history of Alcohol and Risk Management violations and the fact that Sigma Pi Nationals pulled the charter so quickly wave red flags to me after having been a division officer and hearing about numerous chapter problems.

I certainly hope that you're right and I'm wrong on this -- but I really don't think that will be the case at the end of the investigation.

The Saturday, September 11, 2004 Denver Post has an article that says the night Spady died was "not the first time she dramk heavily." The article quotes the Fort Collins police chief as saying, "I know there was alcohol in the [Sigma Pi] house. Lots of it."

According to the article the police chief also indicated that she "went to at least two other houses where she drank before she ended up at the Sigma Pi fraternity house."

Article is at

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,...394284,00.html

Exlurker, I don't if anyone else had this problem but when I tried your link it came up as invalid.

wrigley, I apologize. I went back and fixed it in my post, so it should work now.

Sometimes the "good kids" and the "cream of the crop" are exactly the ones who will drink the most and find themselves vomiting, unconscious, or dead. Those good kids are the ones who didn't break out of their shells in high school or who were afraid to misbehave while their parents were around. Now that they're at college, feeling liberated and safe in their new environment, they're inclined to do stupid things. They don't know where their limits are, and they'll drink as much as possible to get drunk as quickly as possible.

</tangent>

Not to cast a shadow on this young lady, but it seems that there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than many of us know about.

A source told me that she had a rather revealing web site and had left Chi Omega. While it seems that she have should have been on top of the world, it sounds like there were serious problems in her head.

We may never know for sure what was and she was thinking in her mind and life.

Why would she be going to S PI house to change clothes, supposedly, she did know in a casual way some of the members.

I am beginning to think that the Sigma Pi Brothers took one on the chin. But I would still like to hear more about the situation before it dies in the news media.

The article said she was found around 6:20 p.m. and had been dead for 12 hours, and was in a little-used room in the house.

That means that she may have died around 6 a.m.

Which means that the brothers doing the checks were probably doing so around midnight, 2 a.m., even 4 a.m.

At which point, they possibly stopped checking because they probably went to bed, not that they stopped because they were partying too hard.

I know that I would have assumed, if I'd checked and saw that she was unconscious but still breathing, that she would have slept it off and wouldn't still be there when I woke up around ten or eleven a.m.

That assumption, and my lack of experience, and my potential own level of alcohol, would have led me to not tell others that she was in that room drunk and passed out, would have led me not to call 911, would have led me not to check on her the next morning, but would have led me to think that she must be fine, and that I'd call later on that afternoon to see if she was feeling better.

Please keep in mind that she and many of the fraternity brothers were only 18-21 years old. Not many of us really know how to deal with weird situations at that age. The fact that the police said that there was booze all over the fraternity house does not necessarily mean that she did drink there. Maybe she was on the way home and felt woozy, and felt that the house would be a safe place to crash for a few minutes, rather than calling a cab ($$$), or trying to walk home by herself.

My point being, we don't know all of the details, and until/unless we do, maligning the brothers and the young lady won't bring her back. I personally don't need to know why she chose to leave her sorority-- that's her business and her chapter's business, not my business.

A better response is to contact our nationals and our local chapters, as well as our college campuses, and bring this issue to light-- have our chapters discuss what happened, and what should be done if our friends get into that kind of a situation. It isn't just greeks who get alcohol poisoning, or drive drunk, or make other stupid and uninformed choices.

great post, kate.

Any updates on the toxicology report. I am curious about the official cause of death.

Surreal
 

I was one of Sam's best friends, and upon returning from her funeral in Nebraska am saddened by the media's potrayal of Sam.
I personaly was chased to my car every time I went outside, followed on campus from class to class, heckled at her candlelight vigil held here, literally followed to Nebraska for her funeral service and burial. And immediatly after we watched her casket lowered as we walked to our cars we were photographed and hounded by reporters. Companies that have advertisments in the Denver Post have pulled their advertisments from the paper due to biased and tasteless reporting on the papers part. Her website was a private photo album not intended to be hacked into by reporters.
All who knew Sam knew how amazing and unique she was.

No matter what, the blame cannot be placed on the members of sigma pi or anyone else. When something so tragic and unexpected occurs, people tend to need something/someone to heave their own insecurity and pain upon.
Sam was an amazing woman and I am a better person to have known her.
I hope the good to come from this is people looking at their own lives and reevaluate your own drinking habits and understand this could happen to anyone even your best friend.