Would You Let Your Kid Go To CU?

At my alma mater, there were no sororities (there are now). The Greek system* was on the decline--c'mon, it was 1969. Most of the houses are on campus, and so are under some university control.

Not so at Boulder. The houses are not on campus, so the university has limited control. But I want to know. How is this widespread underage drinking any different than dope peddling? Don't folk do jail time for dope peddling?

Stories: Those Who Have Died; This Is What Happens and When To Call 911

The story that follows is about Gordie Bailey, his life and senseless death.

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*note: "Greek" is code for frats & sororities, because most have Greek alphabet names. Brief history of fraternities at American colleges.

Stepfather lashes out at CU officials after drinking death By The Associated Press Friday, October 15, 2004

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- The stepfather of a student who died of alcohol poisoning after a fraternity ritual said University of Colorado officials need to get control of the fraternity system. "If the chancellor has no control over that fraternity system, if I were in that position, I would resign," said Michael Lanahan, whose stepson, Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr. of Dallas, died Sept. 17.

Chancellor Richard Byyny said through a spokeswoman Tuesday that the university has no direct authority over the off-campus fraternity and sorority system. "We certainly can understand the sense of frustration over the fact that at CU, the Greek system is independent," said spokeswoman Pauline Hale. "That does not mean the university is powerless, however."

Hale said the university is using "persuasion" to reform fraternities and sororities.

Byyny has said he wants Greek leaders to delay their rush periods -- when students join -- until the students' second semester or sophomore year. CU is also considering requiring fraternities have live-in advisers, similar to sorority "house mothers."

Bailey, an 18-year-old freshman, had just joined Chi Psi. He and he and 26 other pledges were taken to the mountains near Boulder for a bonfire ceremony that included 10 bottles of whiskey and wine and were reportedly told they could not leave until the whiskey was gone.

National Chi Psi leaders have said the bonfire incident was hazing. Boulder authorities were considering whether to file charges. Bailey was the second of four students nationwide to die in drinking-related incidents within four weeks.

Samantha Spady, 19, died of alcohol poisoning Sept. 6 at a Colorado State University fraternity house in Fort Collins.

Blake Adam Hammontree, 19, was found dead on Sept. 30 at a University of Oklahoma fraternity house in Norman. His blood alcohol content was 0.42, more than five times the legal limit.

University of Arkansas student Bradley Barrett Kemp, 20, died Oct. 2 after drinking beer, taking two prescription drugs and possibly smoking marijuana, police said.

A fatal mix of zest, trust: CU frat pledge wouldn't quit on teammates--Friday, October 15, 2004

By George Merritt and Amy Herdy Denver Post Staff Writers

No matter what the pain, even when he couldn't see straight, or breathe, or taste anything but dirt and blood, Lynn "Gordie" Bailey would not quit. It was how he played football. It was how he lived life.

Standing around a campfire in the mountains of Gold Hill with 26 other Chi Psi pledges, the 18-year-old Bailey faced a new challenge with his new team: "No one is leaving until the whiskey is gone."

He would not let them down. No matter what. "My brain is telling my body to quit," he once wrote of playing football, "but my body won't let it." When he was urged to finish vast amounts of Ten High Whiskey and Carlo Rossi wine, Bailey's enthusiasm did not quit.

His body, however, did. By the next morning, he was dead.

Since that night of Sept. 16, a backlash of questions has put the University of Colorado and the fraternity on the defensive about drinking and accountability.

Bailey's family begged for answers, their bewilderment soon turning to anger.

Meanwhile, how the young man with the J. Crew good looks and golden future could lose his perspective, and his life, can be found in his essay titled "Band of Brothers." "The game has taught me to believe in myself and to believe in my teammates," Bailey wrote. "To trust them."

No matter what.

"Gordie wanted to impress his new band of brothers," said Michael Lanahan, Bailey's stepfather. "That fraternity should have known better. They were babies taking care of babies. Where's the brotherhood? The compassion?"

Even as a young boy, Gordie Bailey was fearless. In elementary school, he would leap off tables while brandishing a play sword. "In a parent-teacher conference, they once told me, 'Well, your child will never die of a heart attack,"' said his mother, Leslie Lanahan. "There's not a nervous, shy bone in him."

His parents divorced when he was 2, and both remarried. All four parents remain close, celebrating holidays and traveling together.

In seventh grade, Bailey joined the football team "because everyone else did," he later wrote. "Living in Texas, you either play football or you don't." Self-described that year as "fat" and "unathletic," Bailey considered dropping the sport that first season, "but I didn't want to be a quitter." The next year, he returned, three inches taller and 25 pounds heavier - in muscle.

"Playing football was fun," Bailey wrote. "I enjoyed knocking people over. I loved the competition, trying to prove that my team was better than the opposition. I enjoyed the smell of grass and sweat and the feeling when you can't feel your legs, but you look up at the scoreboard and your team has more points. ...

"For the first time in my life, I was a football player."

The year of Gordie

Bailey found his second home at far-off Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, where he spent his high school years with about 600 students. And there, he found success.

In football, he was team captain. In theater, he got the lead. Classmates who once fled as he taught himself guitar were requesting songs from him the following year.

His senior year at Deerfield was, as one teacher put it, "the year of Gordie."

Bailey declared Sundays to be "beach days," when he would strip down to a bathing suit and head outside, "even if it was raining outside or disgusting and cold," said Alex Kleiner, Bailey's friend and former roommate. Bailey was impulsive and eager to entertain anyone who might watch. Goofing around one day, he poured a bottle of children's shampoo into his eye to test its claim of "tearless."

Living at an isolated school, where even Saturday nights are spent on campus, Bailey developed such a strong sense of community that he established an official club for hugging and made plans for "The Great Deerfield Spoon," envisioning the entire student body lying side-by-side.

"He was just such a clever and fun person," Kleiner said. "He would just make up something fun to do. He would do something to entertain people and entertain himself."

And that was enough for Bailey, Kleiner said. Bailey was not opposed to drinking - he would drink alcohol on vacations or at home in Dallas - but not at Deerfield. "Never," Kleiner said. "In his three years, never."

For one, it would not have been easy to drink at a place where students and faculty live together. He might have gotten away with it, but someone would have noticed.

"There are no secrets around here," said John Reese, Bailey's adviser and theater teacher. Besides, the school was too important to Bailey, his friends said. He would tell his fellow classmates, "Don't be stupid," Kleiner said.

"Deerfield is too precious," Bailey would say. "Don't risk losing it for drinking." At home, Bailey could have an occasional glass of wine at a restaurant, the Lanahans said. They knew the idea of drinking wasn't a foreign one - in his room, he kept a collection of beer bottles and shot glasses. But his parents said they taught him to be responsible - don't drink and drive.

If his 1997 Chevy Tahoe wasn't parked in the driveway in the morning, they did not worry that he was hurt. And, they added, he never got into trouble.

"Michael and I were raised in a similar way," said Leslie Lanahan. "Our parents gave us a really long leash. We did the same with Gordie. We were not overprotective. I regret that now. We trusted him and let him make his own decisions."

His father in Idaho, Lynn Bailey Sr., said things were much the same when his son was living there.

"He'd talk about drinking, it was always just beer. ... I never let him drink beer at home. In restaurants, it was Dr Pepper. He'd say, 'Dad, you don't need to worry about me."'

When Bailey arrived in Boulder without visiting CU, it was not a perfect fit, family and friends say. The freshman was overwhelmed by the 25,000 undergraduate students and began talking to friends about transferring to a small, East Coast school. "I think what he was looking for in a frat was just the small community," Kleiner said. "That is what he loved most about Deerfield is how close he was able to get to his friends. ...

"He might have felt his new group of friends was the same group he had at Deerfield ... but they weren't."

One tragic night of drinking

On Sept. 16, Chi Psi fraternity members took Bailey and 26 other blindfolded pledges to the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest. There, they were told to drink liquor as part of the tradition of being pinned as new members of the fraternity.

The pledges did their best to finish six bottles of wine and four bottles of whiskey - in 30 minutes.

By the time the group returned to the fraternity house, Bailey and another teenager were so drunk they had to be carried to a couch.

Vomiting into a metal pail may have been Bailey's final conscious act. He fell into an alcohol-induced coma. Vomit caked the corners of his mouth.

At that point, two fraternity members began another brotherly tradition:

With a magic marker they covered Bailey's face with writing, then moved to his body, scribbling drawings of male genitalia, a racial slur, "Bitch," and "It sucks to be you," among others.

Sometime in the early morning hours, covered in vomit and ink and lying face down on the floor, Bailey was so flooded with alcohol that his mind forgot to breathe.

When authorities responded to a 911 call just before 9 a.m., he was already dead.

"The worst thing ..."

Leslie Lanahan stepped outside an Austin, Texas, restaurant to take the call.

"Are you sitting down?" she remembers being asked.

"I was screaming, and it was awful," she later recalled. "You think you've got another chance - that he's in the hospital, but it's already over."

Lynn Bailey Sr. was playing golf at Sun Valley, Idaho, when his son was pronounced dead. The call from Leslie Lanahan went straight to his answering machine.

"The worst thing that could have happened has happened, please call," Leslie Lanahan said, full of tears.

"And then she told me our son was dead," Bailey said. "I didn't believe it. Then numbness set in."

Bailey's high school friends were overwhelmed with loneliness. That night, two dozen of them traveled across New England to gather at Yale University.

"As much as we all love each other, I don't think any one other of us would have been able to draw that crowd that quickly," Kleiner said. "That was his power."

From Idaho, Lynn Bailey Sr. took a plane to meet Michael Lanahan in Boulder "to face all the awful stuff - meeting with police, with the chancellor, clear out his room."

Bailey Sr. called the meeting with CU officials "perfunctory on their part."

"They were guarded. It's sort of sad, but that's the real world. They expressed their sympathy but it was perfunctory; they were not really there with deep compassion."

The more the family learns about what happened, the more their frustration grows.

And, they wonder, will their son's death bring change.

"They were all told they had to finish that liquor in 30 minutes, and they did," Lanahan said. "Congratulations. Now that we know that alcohol kills, are you going to do the right thing?"

One room remains closed

At home in Dallas, Leslie Lanahan avoids her son's room. There's the black belt certificate he won for taekwondo in fifth grade. Surf shop stickers. A football jersey pinned to the wall and a workout bench at the foot of his bed. And beside it, on the floor, there are four heavy duffel bags of his belongings, shipped home from CU. She hasn't been able to open them.

For the Lanahans, grief is ever-present. "It's like the movie 'Groundhog Day,' Michael Lanahan said. "The nightmare just keeps being the same." Every day, said Leslie Lanahan, "I wake up with a huge chest pain, and I think, ah, I have to go through another day." To manage, she said, she attends to the business of her son's death - making arrangements, writing thank-you notes.

"I'm in shock," she said. "And every night, I just lose it. Michael and I lie in bed and just cry and cry."

Comments

[Laurie Monahan]

We are part of Gordie's family-We want Leslie and Michael to make this a national cause and want them to continue with the awareness that they have brought to this tragic issue-They need to hold the university responsible and all those who were involved-Gordie was here for a reason and we all need to carry out his mission.

[Mary Fitzpatrick]

My heart goes out to all of Gordie's family - Leslie and Michael and their daughter are all being so strong. Good luck for the future, and know that you all will be in my prayers, and I will do my best to spread Gordie's story to my children. Gordie sounds like a great boy, and he has such a warm smile.

[Lisa]

I am a student at the University of Colorado and I am deeply concerned with irresponsible drinking here. My prayers are with Gordie's family and I only hope something like this won't happen again. However, CU has become the martyr for negative media frenzy. Granted, we have had a lot of misfortunes this year, there is no reason to point out underage drinking at CU as if it doesn't happen anywhere else. I've been to several parties on other college campuses including Northern Arizona University, CSU, and even the "perfect" USC and can tell you firsthand that there is an equal amount of drinking at all those places. The media so easily overlooks the numerous nobel prize winners, scholars and outstanding professors coming from CU yet can, without even thinking twice, label our school "the breeding ground for underage drinking." Nobody even remembers that Wieman was voted professor of the year yet EVERYONE has heard about Ward Churchill and our President resigning. This is the first time I can truly say that the grown-ups need to grow up! I love my school and I know the value of the knowledge I'm gaining here, even if everyone else doesn't. I didn't come here to drink myself silly. I didn't come here because it's the "number one party school man!" I came here because I know the true value of CU and I can maturely overlook the media machine and gossip that surrounds this institution.

[TMINUSNYC]

First of all, I'm appalled to see that the last comment on this page was in 2005. So easily people forget or move on like they don't care.

I just came across the movie Haze on Hulu 2 hours ago. Just watched it. RIP Gordie.

I would like to help this foundation get their point across - Just not sure how - You can reach me @ http://www.facebook.com/TMINUSNYC - Anytime.

My love goes out to his family.

-TMINUS NYC

[CheechWeech]

The Bailey-Lanahan family can do the most good for college kids and their families by not supporting underaged drinking. In this article as well as the one in the Denver Post, they speak of Gordie being allowed to drink at home and at parties - a teenaged boy! I don't know the dynamics of the family, but they knew he was developing a pattern of alcohol usage and did nothing about it!! I think this is the biggest message that they can send... I regret their loss but if they had not created a supportive culture of underaged drinking, it is likely that Gordie would be around today.