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2 Chi Psi members at CU sentenced for role in drinking death
2 Chi Psi members at CU sentenced for role in drinking death
Rocky Mountain News
July 19, 2005
Guilty pleas in frat death
2 Chi Psi members at CU sentenced for role in drinking rite
By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News
BOULDER - The last of a dozen members of a defunct fraternity pleaded
guilty Monday in the alcohol-related death last fall of freshman Lynn
Gordon "Gordie" Bailey.
Daniel Adam Rosenberg, 21, and William Alexander Percy, 20, each pleaded
guilty to one count of providing alcohol to a minor, a class 2 misdemeanor.
District Judge Daniel Hale handed down identical deferred sentences.
Rosenberg and Percy must perform 100 hours of community service and take
part in a restorative justice program, a form of dialogue with community
members.
The other 10 defendants received the same sentences during the spring.
They were part of the Chi Psi fraternity at the University of Colorado. Its
charter was yanked by the group's national parent organization after
Bailey's death.
Bailey, 18, died Sept. 17 after an initiation rite the night before in the
mountains west of Boulder. He had consumed between 31 and 36 ounces of
80-proof whiskey, prosecutors estimated. Bailey died at the fraternity
house after passing out.
The fraternity members avoided stiffer charges because it was not clear
anyone forced Bailey to drink.
Some of the other participants told Boulder police they did not drink and
were not pressured to do so.
"The fraternity culture itself must bear the lion's share of blame for
this," prosecutor John Pickering told Hale.
Hale called Bailey's death "a terrible tragedy not unique to this
fraternity, this university or these young men."
He said alcohol education programs must begin as early as junior high school.
Lawyers for both students said their clients were mortified by Bailey's
death and have learned a lesson.
"This is the last the court will see of him," said Keith Collins, Percy's
attorney.
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