Breaking news: It happens again.
 

Man found dead at CU fraternity
By Bernie Morson, Rocky Mountain News
September 17, 2004

An official from the Boulder County coroner's office came to the Chi Psi fraternity home on the University of Colorado campus Friday morning to investigate the death of an 18-year-old male student whose body was found at the house.

The coroner was still at the home at 1080 14th St. at 12:30 p.m.

Julie Brooks, Boulder police spokeswoman, said someone called 911 to report the body at 8:57 a.m. She said the body showed no signs of trauma. Police are not releasing his name or saying whether he was a member of the fraternity. They do not know how long he had been dead.

His body was found in a common area inside the three-story brick, neo-classical fraternity house where 39 members live, Brooks said.

Friday morning, many of the fraternity brothers were being questioned by police.

None would comment to reporters.

Neighbors said they heard music and normal activity at the house Thursday night, but they indicated there were no parties going on, at least that they could hear.

Thursday was the last day of rush, or freshman pledge week, for many Greek houses on campus.



http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...189637,00.html

More info from the Daily Camera:
Student found dead in Boulder fraternity
By Camera staff
September 17, 2004

An 18-year-old University of Colorado student was found dead this morning inside the Chi Psi fraternity house on University Hill in Boulder, police said.

A member of the fraternity called police around 9 a.m.

There were no obvious signs of trauma, but police are still investigating.

The man's name is not being released, pending family notification.

Several Boulder fraternities and sororities were holding midday parties Thursday to celebrate the end of CU's Rush Week, and police are investigating whether there was a party at the Chi Psi house, at 1080 14th St.

Today, members of the fraternity lined up at the house to go in one by one to retrieve their belongings. The men were visibly upset, but would not comment.

One said into a cell phone: "Dude, one of the pledges died."

This is not meant to belittle the tragedy, whatever it turns out to be, but it does bring back into focus some of the things we've discussed before about dealing with an event like this one. Nobody but a chapter advisor should be saying anything about what happened -- especially when the media is present. You might not even know a reporter is present if they don't have a camera, tape recorder or other equipment with them, so it is best to simply keep quiet anywhere in public.

It is terrible that two fatal incidents would happen so close together at schools of such close proximity.

how sad for all those concerned...
thoughs and prayers are with them.

I do not condone booze in chapter houses but lets get real how many college students are found dead of an overdose in dorm rooms year after year and the stories don't even make the paper.

I'm sorry but around here any student death makes the papers and/or the tv news....

I agree. We're way to quick to try to deflect "blame" if there is any on the media. If there wasn't a story, they couldn't cover it.

Here's a link to the Rocky Mountain News coverage:

http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/st...191935,00.html

University of Colorado Grief Counselors have said that alcohol may have been a part of this tragedy.

At our university, any kid found dead, whether it be in a dorm, an off campus house or greek housing, it was covered. No offense to Chi Psi, and my prayers are with this family, but if something happened to this kid on their watch, they should pay the penalty. It's so damn sad nobody looked out for the kid.

Same in Boston.

And I agree that the chapter needs to be held responsible if the student was in their house.

~ Mel.

Not only that, Tom, it is almost always a death sentence on the chapter, even if the chapter is cleared of wrongdoing - the PR is too overwhelmingly negative.

This is getting frustrating to see this so much in Colorado this year...I've been a lukewarm advocate of enforcing greek systems to go dry, but the more stories like this I see, especially considering the CSU case and my attachment to the house in question, heats up my support more and more.

A double whammy like this one will almost certainly force the issue here in Colorado.

I've never been an advocate of dry housing, but have thought for quite a while that it is inevitable as long as chapters don't enforce their rules and obey the laws.

It's possible, maybe even likely, that sooner or later the fact that, "everybody drinks underage in college," isn't going to matter any more. The schools will move back toward more "In Loco Parentis," the university and city police will crack down and a lot of students will suffer.

when is the last time a school ever took responsibility for a student that was found dead in a dorm?

This happens all the time. Just off the top of my head at schools I'm close to, MIT is currently being sued for the death of an undergraduate in her dorm room (a suicide). Harvard was raked across the coals in the national press for a murder-suicide that's still impacting its reputation ten years later. NYU is taking a terrific beating at the moment for a number of student deaths on campus, including one that resulted from drug use, and the lawsuits are beginning to roll in.

I can't, however, think of the last time I read about a student found dead of alcohol poisoning in a dorm.

"Everybody drinks underage in college" is a copout - an easy way to not focus on a real, life-threatening problem. We should not be ignoring the problem, just because "everybody does it," - we should be setting the standard, as fraternities started out to do.

Think about it - when was Greek Life truly the dominating force of leadership and postive examples on a campus? I would posit that this has not been the case in a majority of campuses since the late 1950-early 1960's, right about the time that in loco parentis started to be removed.

That is not to say greeks are no longer the leaders, but, in most cases, I would say it IS true, and, in many cases, the examples we set, are NOT the examples we should be setting (i.e. the leaders on the social scene...or the leaders for the most on-the-bleeding-edge of behaviors).

In too many cases, we have strayed too far from the original founding ideals of our organizations. I see movement back towards those ideals, which is encouraging, but, I have a feeling that society in general would judge us as being "too little, too late" in doing so.

when is the last time a school ever took responsibility for a student that was found dead in a dorm?
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That doesn't mean the school is taking responsibility. They do everything possible to point the blame elsewhere. If a student drinks in the dorms and eventually dies at a fraternity house then they blame the fraternity because it is their house. If a student drinks at a fraternity and dies in the dorms then the school blames the fraternity becase they served the student.

You went to Penn, right? Do you remember a couple of years ago when a Penn grad died at the FIJI house? He has been drinking all day at the lacrosse game. After the game he went bar hopping. After that he went back to the house and fell down the back steps. The house was owned by Penn. The back steps didn't have a railing which was required by local BOCA codes and Penn's internal memos proved that Penn knew about problem. According to Penn's contract with the fraternity, Penn was responsible for the maintenance of the house. How did Penn accept responsiblilty? They responded by suspending the fraternity.

Schools, like any other business, go into Risk Management/Damage Control mode when something like this happens.

It's a larger version of what your car insurance agent tells you if you are involved in an accident:

"Don't admit guilt."

Actually I went to Harvard, but I do know that story from Penn. I think you have some of the facts off, though -- he was served at an official FIJI alumni pig roast as well as elsewhere with his brothers, and the FIJIs were not "expelled" by Penn -- they voluntarily voted to surrender their charter during an investigation by their own nationals, which had suspended them following the incident.

http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vn...9?in_archive=1

Everyone who is being sued in any situation tries to put the blame elsewhere. That's what being sued is all about. NO ONE, including any fraternity I've ever heard of, takes responsibility for a death when they aren't forced to; they'd be out of business in a year if they did. Fraternities are just as worried about liability as universities are; that's why they close chapters with "risk management" problems. "Risk management" is a euphemism for "You fools are going to get our asses sued, and we don't want to be held responsible for anybody's death."

Can you tell me some times when this has happened? Anyone here can name multiple drinking deaths in fraternity houses from the last few years off the tops of their heads, but kids drinking themselves into a stupor in a dorm and then dying in a dorm just doesn't happen very much, because dorms are almost always dry and almost always have adult supervision with real teeth. The fraternities that follow that policy don't have problems with this.

Edited to add: the fraternities that follow that policy include all NPC sororities, and note that (for example) Chi O is not being blamed/sued for the death of its former member in Colorado. NPC sorority houses are struck by lightning a lot more than they host alcohol-related deaths.

Isn't this school in the news for being a huge party school with lots of bingers?

-Rudey

Assuming you mean Colorado (Boulder), the answer is yes.

Fine, here is where I'm going to start.

How big is the Greek system at a school like this?

Do people see the risks associated with this school?

Do Greeks see it and still continue to operate, etc. there?

-Rudey

Some excellent questions.

According to the CU webpage, there are 15 active fraternities and 10 active sororities. There were several listed as apparantely inactive. There are about 2,700 GLO members.

I think what people "see" in Colorado is the beautiful campus at the foot of the mountains and all of the outdoor activities. The school is also highly regarded in areas like Chemistry (Two Nobel Laureats on the Chem Faculity) and Aerospace Engineering. A huge number of astronauts are CU graduates -- including one each who were killed in each of the Space Shuttle disasters. Important parts of the Hubble Telescope were built in conjunction with C.U. All in all, a very good college in spectacular surroundings. A fair number of affluent students come to CU, Boulder for just these reasons.

As you asked earlier, though, it does have a party school reputation.

The relationship between the school and the Greek Community is fairly unusual. Basically, as I understand it, a few years ago (maybe 10-15) the school took a hands off attitude toward the Greek System. A lot of people read that as, "We'll give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves," and the "problem" will go away.

I can't really comment on present chapters at all. Within the past few years, there have been a number of alcohol and hazing incidents, but really probably not any more than most schools of its size. I would be interested in knowing if current members think differently since I'm really looking from the outside.

Delt had a huge presence on the CU campus (Beta Kappa Chapter) for many years, but after a number of alcohol and drug related incidents and the trashing of one of the most beautiful Greek houses I've ever seen, closed the chapter for a third time, I doubt that we will ever recolonize there. Local alumni had raised over $1.5 million to refurbish it only months before. Clearly, we think there's too much risk and baggage to go back there. A former very high ranking alumni officer told me that the chapters were (paraphrasing) a bunch of rich, drug using, alcoholic ski bums.

I was on the adjunct faculty (School of Journalism) there for several years and would say that that's unfair in regard to the student body as a whole. The chapter was gone by the time I taught there, but older alumni members of the chapter were highly disappointed in what it had turned into, and many of them would not support an attempt to recolonize either. To what extent our former experiences match the rest of the Greek System, I couldn't say.

It's sad to walk by the old Shelter with the Delt letters carved in stone above the front door and think how badly my former brothers screwed this up. The house now belongs to the university and is used for Continuing Education offices.

I hope that's a fairly ballanced and accurate snapshot -- but again, not having anything officially to do with the university or Greek System there, it's only an outside view.

Is it a school where even if Greeks didn't exist, the partying would be done and it would be done hard? I am thinking so.

This is basically what I'm talking about. So many national fraternities are rushing to show how many chapters they have and to say how large they are and it seems they are just too damn ignorant to see what kind of risk they keep taking on.

I had cousing that went to that school and I think they're just living off the family since graduating.

-Rudey

Unfortunately, the schools always seem to catch some heat. In May 2003, there was a shooting on the college campus that I taught at. We don't know all of the details and probably never will, but it was awful. The young man was a college freshman who had JUST turned 19 4 days before that.

In one organization that I am involved with, the Exec Board and the Section Coordinators we discussed a new "responsible drinking policy" where we considered asking delegates to
a) follow age guidelines according the law ( 21 and up, which almost all members are)
b) watch out for one another and to be willing to "86" someone if they had too much to drink
c) we also said that this policy could apply to other adults as well acting in behalf of the organization to show that drinking responsibly needs to happen at any age..

I wouldn't disagree with that assessment.

I can't speak for other national organizations, I just don't think we will go back there. In other terms, we have been about the same size for the past 8-10 years -- right around 115 chapters.

We have started colonizing smaller schools, while re-colonizing only a few of our bigger and better past chapters.

As for your cousins and other CU grads, I doubt if they're any different in terms of employment, etc. than other similar schools.

These ski bums, what exactly do they do? I mean do they do coke and go skiing?

-Rudey

Sure, and some of them become politicians, and some become jigalos (is that redundant with politician?) and some become businessmen and some astronauts, and some OD, and some grow up and some don't.

Some just hang around the hills and teach skiing in the winter and bartend in the summer.

So what does that have to do with a kid who it looks more and more like he drank himself to death?

Maybe, as has been suggested in some other threads in other forums, we should get back on topic.

From what I understand, the person was not Greek, but rather a recruit. He was being heavily recruited by a colony there.

You're entirely right.

Getting back on topic, I believe that it is a culture at the school that needs to be attacked and eliminated because nothing Greeks can do would get rid of the problems.

-Rudey

Rudey,

To answer a couple of your questions. Greek Life is 10-12% of the school. There is a lot of partying that has nothing to do with the Greek system. Furthermore, what no one seems to know here is that CU has been a "dry" campus since 1995, my sophomore year. Alcohol is officially only allowed at third party outlets but there's been smaller, less advertised events going on in fraternity basements since..... about a week after the resolution was signed.

How many rules can they pass? How much freedom can they try to take away? It didn't work last time and it never will because kids getting their first taste of responsibility will continue to use it in all the wrong ways. I'm just sick that these kids managed to learn nothing from a young girl dying a couple of weeks and 40 miles away. They drew on his face instead of checking his vital signs. That's disgusting..... really disgusting. We need to educate the kids better about the risks of alcohol. We need to change the culture of drinking so it's not such a new and exciting thing to the average teenager and more like the European cultures. I don't think more rules is the way to do that.

As for the student population, DeltAlum's assesment was a little too right on. One of my economics professors once told me that the average income of a the parents of a CU student was about $150,000. This Chi Psi that died was from Dallas by way of a private East Coast boarding school. We're a priviledged bunch for a public school, especially the Greek system. However, lets not blame that. I've met ski bums/potheads who found their way here from UMass and BU and UMich and a thousand other places.

Chi Psi has had a continual presence on campus since 1929. However, they were without IFC recognition but with charter most of the time I was an undergrad there.

At the University of Kentucky, it use to be that the consumption of alcohol was "ok" pretty much anywhere on campus. It was ok to drink in your dorm room or in the fraternity or sorority houses. Heck, depending on the situation, it was ok to drink on other parts of campus. For example, wine receptions for an art opening to a keg being brought in at the end of a class. (This really happened.) It was the *culture* of the campus at the time.

Fast forward.

After some alcohol related deaths, (not limited to the Greek community or to the UK campus) the University administration cracked down. UK became one of the first dry campuses in the nation. This applied to all University owned property. And property for any organization recognized by the University. Which meant all the Greek houses on and off campus.

So what happened?

My understanding is that initially, the GLOs - mainly the fraternities - had a hard time with conforming to the "dry only" policy. But after repeated University and various Inter/National GLO crackdowns - and graduating of the chapters' "old school" members - the *culture* changed.

And while I am sure that negative issues and situations may continue to arise with respect to alcohol, the "dry only" policy is now the *culture* of the campus.

I would like to add that this does not mean that the UK Greek community - or UK students in general - do not know how to party or have a good time. Just the opposite may be said. They still party and have a good time, but for the most part do so responsibly. The *culture* is that all events that involve alcohol must use a third party vendor. So risk management issues that are often associated with alcohol is kept at a minimum. If there is an issue, the individual - or group if applicable - is usually dealt with swiftly and fairly.

As such, Greek life is doing well. So well that the Greek system has grown from 17 fraternity chapters to 22 within the past ten years. So well that the University is working with chapters in developing the Greek Park. So well that the University is helping to build excellent new houses in prime real estate areas of Lexington for the Greek community.

So it is possible for the *culture* of drinking on a campus to change. And for the better.

edited for grammar and spelling

I don't doubt that this culture can change. But...I doubt that Greeks could ever change it and I think Greeks should consider whether they want to hold onto these high risk chapters. Once the university addresses its own issues and the campus is safe, then we should be there. Yes there are always exceptions, but to me these schools are hurting us too much.

-Rudey

There are two different issues here. High risk chapters and high risk campuses. They are not necessarily inclusive.

High risk chapters: GLOs should seriously review all their chapters for risk management issues and consider appropriate action regardless of the campus.

High risk campuses: A GLO should weigh its options regarding installing a chapter on a campus that may be considered a high risk. However, if a chapter is already on an "at risk" campus, and happens to be fine (i.e. not at risk), then it should not be removed. The chapter isn't at risk, and it may very well be offering a social alternative.

Did Greeks change the culture at UK? It depends on how you view it.

At UK, it was a Greek supportive Administration and Alumni Association that implemented the proactive policy.

The feeling was that this was not a Greek community specific issue, but the culture of the times and as such, the campus as well. While Greeks weren't singled out, they seemed to be on the front line due to the social aspect associated with being Greek.

And grated, it wasn't initially supported by the UK Greek community. However, UK's Greek Alumni were made to understand the benefits of doing this and they in turn made sure that their chapters understood.

The outcome was that not only did it insure that the Greek community would survive, but flourish at UK.

My dad and I had a conversation about this last night. He heard about the former Chi O girl found at a fraternity house and now he is all worried. ( I live across from the LXA house, so he knows what and where it is)

I had to explain that things like this happen a lot and the reason why these circumstances are blown all over the media is probably because of what organization they are in and where they were found.

He's still worried.

I'm sorry but i think our parents and HQs should be worried. I think it is tragic that this young woman's family has their pain being broadcast across the country but the reality is that we lose people every year to alocohol related deaths. I think at some point our orgs need to be more organized and focused on addressing the issues that come with college drinking. We state over and over again, that no matter what we will drink. Many people have had those nights where it could have been close. I don't think that this is really about the fact that she was a former sorority member and found in a fraternity house. The reality is that she was a young intelligent woman who lost her life. Yea there is responsibility on her, but it is also on the shoulders of everyone at the college. We are social groups and we have to promote a SAFE social atmosphere. Yea alcohol is fun, but it is a hell of a lot more fun when the ambulance doesn't have to pull up on your lawn.

-getting off my soap box now

There is a lot of talk about education instead of rules and regulations.

Education is good.

Delt has had DTAA (Delts Talking About Alcohol) for several years. It was the first program of its kind to get funding help from the government. Every Delt must take it. Most chapters get it every year. Several other GLO's asked and were given permission to use it under other names specific to their organizations, so some you have probably taken it and don't even know it.

It's a pretty good program. I took it as an advisor.

It is not a program that tries to stop alcohol consumption, but rather educate young people as to the effects of alcohol and the myths surrounding drinking. It preaches moderation, not abstinance.

As I said, it's a good thing.

I'm just not sure it works well enough.

My sad conclusion is that to really make a significant dent in college drinking it will take these educational programs, dry campuses, legal crackdowns on the part of local authorities and fairly harsh penalities. (Not just to Greeks, but student bodies as a whole)

I don't like that, but I don't know what else gives much more than lip service to solving the problem.

Obviously, I understand that even that won't solve the problem entirely.

Or, we can wash our hands of the situation, hope it will go away instead of grow, sit back and watch the body count.