The University of Colorado Boulder is mourning the death of junior Jeremiah Park, who was found off campus in the University Hill neighborhood on Friday afternoon.
Boulder police responded to an apartment complex on Pleasant Street, less than a mile from campus, around 4:42 p.m. on Aug. 23. The Boulder County Coroner’s Office, which will determine the cause and manner of death, said they do not suspect foul play at this time, police said.The university expressed its condolences over Park’s death and is offering support through its Office of Counseling and Psychiatric Services, as well as other campus resources.
“The CU Boulder community is deeply saddened to confirm the death of CU Boulder student, Jeremiah Park, a rising junior who was found deceased off campus late Friday afternoon,” the university released in a statement.
The Sigma Nu fraternity, where Park was a member, also mourned his loss, with Executive Director Brad Beacham telling CBS News:15 years after pledge’s hazing death, relationship between CU and Boulder’s fraternities “nonexistent”Gordie Bailey and his mother Leslie Lanahan are pictured in this undated photograph. Bailey was 18 years old when he died in 2004 after drinking a fatal amount of alcohol as part of a fraternity pledging ritual while attending CU Boulder.
Fifteen years ago, the hazing death of University of Colorado freshman Gordie Bailey upended the school’s Greek system, forging a rift between the campus and Boulder’s fraternities and leaving diverging views on whether students are any safer.
The fraternities severed ties with the Boulder campus in the wake of the 2004 alcohol-poisoning death rather than accept stricter oversight. Their chief advocate argues fraternity members and their pledges are safer now than they were while affiliated with the university.Fifteen years later, we got no dead kids and no badly hurt kids,” said Marc Stine, the independent Greek advocate who works with the student-run Interfraternity Council on the Hill. “I can’t make kids drink less. And when they’re drunk, they do all kinds of things. Sexual harassment and all of that. But I can get a bystander to call 911.”Bailey’s stepfather, Michael Lanahan, suggests that is not enough.
“They can talk about whatever programs they have, but the environment is screaming, ‘Come here and drink, haze as much as you want, there won’t be any consequences,’ ” he said. “And if you do, the laws are built to protect you. … I think they’re fortunate not to have lost another pledge, but I don’t think anything has changed. A pledge hasn’t died in 15 years. Is that something to celebrate?”
Michael and Leslie Lanahan created the Gordie Foundation — since rechristened The Gordie Center — in their late son’s name, and are fighting to end hazing and substance abuse among college and high school students nationwide.Lanahan said CU Boulder remains “a poster child for an environment that makes it very dangerous for a freshman to go to college there.”
And now, Colorado lawmakers, prompted by a pair of concerned CU sorority members, plan legislation that would put more teeth in the state’s anti-hazing laws.
No hazing cases have been charged in Colorado since 2001, according to records from the Colorado Judicial Branch.CU declined to provide additional details about the results of the campus’s hazing investigations, citing student privacy laws.
The CU student code of conduct’s hazing policy was expanded this academic year to include “any forced violation of university policy, and/or local, state or federal law,” Parra said. The broad language was intended to catch violations that may slip through the cracks.
Hyoung Chang, Denver Post file
Students participate in a candlelight vigil for Gordie Bailey at the Dalton Trumbo Fountain Court at the University of Colorado in Boulder on Sept. 20, 2004.
Tragedy and aftermath
Most of the students currently attending CU Boulder were just kids when Bailey, 18, was found dead on the floor of the Chi Psi fraternity house on the morning of Sept. 17, 2004, with slurs written on his body.
The night before, at a campsite in the Boulder County foothills, Bailey and 26 other Chi Psi pledges had been instructed to down handles of whiskey and bottles of wine in a half hour. Back at the fraternity house, no one called 911 even though Bailey was unconscious. He died of acute alcohol poisoning. His blood-alcohol content was 0.328%.
The reverberations from Bailey’s hazing death soon would reconstruct Greek life in BoulderFraternities broke off from the campus in 2005 after refusing to sign an agreement to delay rush until the spring each year and have live-in house supervisors.
The sororities agreed with the university’s conditions, but saw membership decline drastically three years in, said Stephanie Baldwin, assistant director for fraternity and sorority life at CU.
The sororities asked to prove themselves and created an accreditation program in 2008 to demonstrate they were on the right path, Baldwin said. As a result, the women went back to Greek life pre-2005.The Boulder fraternities under the IFC on the Hill banner — that’s about 2,100 young men in 21 fraternities — set their own rules through a governing board with the power to expel wrongdoing chapters, Stine said. That has happened to three chapters: Delta Chi, which was closed by their national fraternity, and Sigma Pi and Kappa Sigma, which remain operational in Boulder without any local oversight.
The organization’s attention to safety sets it apart from other fraternity systems across the country, said Adam Wenzlaff, the 22-year-old president of Boulder’s oldest fraternity Sigma Nu.IFC on the Hill parties are beyond a doubt, unquestionably the safest parties in Boulder,” Wenzlaff said.
Days before any party, Wenzlaff said, the event is registered with Stine and Boulder police, who are invited to walk through parties at any time. The registration includes a multi-page report detailing what safety precautions are taken, Wenzlaff said. Attendees must prove they are of drinking age, and hard liquor is not allowed.
Stine noted his fraternity members receive anti-hazing training along with informational sessions about alcohol and substance abuse, and directives to call 911 at the first sign of trouble. Soon, 60 IFC on the Hill members will be trained by the Red Cross in CPR, first aid and the use of defibrillators.A growing disconnect
But autonomy has led to clashes, Stine conceded, describing the relationship between Boulder’s fraternities and CU as “nonexistent.”
In 2017, members of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity felt snubbed after a request for a chapter-wide visit from CU’s mental health provider was denied because student groups not affiliated with the campus don’t receive such services free of charge, the Daily Camera newspaper reported.
And in February, Boulder fraternities were banned from renting campus spaces for a year following a fraternity-hosted football tournament at the college in which some of the men allegedly fought and used racist slurs, according to the Camera.Since then, Stine said IFC on the Hill has spent tens of thousands of dollars renting venues in the city to hold informative trainings on alcohol abuse, hazing, sexual assault and other topics crucial to campus safety.
“We all want safe undergraduates,” Stine said. “We just have a different idea of how that works best.”
Devin Cramer, CU’s director for student conduct and conflict resolution, worries about the disconnect between the majority of CU’s fraternal organizations and the school’s administration.
This is evidenced in emails between CU officials and Sigma Pi’s national chapter, a Tennessee-based organization serving as the only form of chapter oversight since the fraternity was expelled from IFC on the Hill in 2013.Last year, Sigma Pi’s national office ordered its Boulder chapter to “cease operations” after five women who attended CU told police they believed they were drugged at parties on the Hill.
“This is the 2nd report we have received regarding Sigma Pi and the fifth allegation this year (at minimum) regarding alleging drugging incidents,” an employee from CU’s Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance wrote in an Oct. 18, 2018, email. “Have you all been receiving many allegations of people being drugged?”