There are some days, like when the planes hit the World Trade Center or when President Kennedy was assassinated, that people will always remember exactly where they were. September 17, 2004 was one of those days for me.
My phone rang that afternoon while I was sitting in my room, and I answered to the quavering voice of my best friend, Lily.
“I have something bad to say,” she said.
“What is it?” I was panicked. “Just say it. It’ll be okay,” I tried to reassure her.
“Gordie died.”
Screaming, crying, and ultimately silence followed her words.
Gordie Bailey was Lily’s older brother. He was a freshman at the University of Colorado at Boulder for roughly three weeks when he passed away after a night of hazing at the Chi Psi fraternity house. On the night of September 16, 2004, he was taken to the top of a mountain with his fellow pledge brothers and made to drink four handles of whiskey and six bottles of wine in thirty minutes. He was found dead the next morning, face down on the floor of the fraternity house, after ten hours of “sleeping it off.”
Lily would later tell me she doesn’t remember anything from that time. I don’t remember much about the days that would follow, only that they were kind of like getting caught in a wave—my head always felt heavy and everything sounded like static. Clarity broke through only in subtle moments, like sunlight splashing over the water.
My friends and I sat in his room and watched home videos of Gordie playing air guitar; we reread his school essays, desperately attempting to find something we hadn’t known before. Some of the strongest people I have ever known were broken. And everything I once held to be true was shaken—I was empty.
Rage soon replaced my emptiness. His death could have been prevented. Gordie lay unconscious in the study of the Chi Psi house for ten hours, and no one called for help. Ten hours? How can I place my faith in my fellow man, when he refuses to help his brother?
I tell this story because I was once a person who believed bad things didn’t happen to good people. I believed that in a situation like Gordie’s, a friend or classmate would help before it was too late. I now realize that bad things can happen to good people. And they will.
But purpose and meaning has been found in the death of Gordie Bailey. In his memory, his family created the Gordie Foundation to educate teenagers and young adults against the dangers of alcohol poisoning, as well as hazing. The Gordie Foundation recently produced a documentary film entitled Haze to spread the message. The goal is realistic—it does not surmise that college students will stop drinking. Nor is the message simplistic or generic, because the truth is, you cannot just be careful and watch for yourself. We are also responsible for those around us.
Gordie is now outlived by all of his peers, his younger sister Lily, and all of those who have made it past the first three weeks of their college experience. I have never stopped wondering to this day, that if someone had merely gotten the courage to call for help, Gordie would still be alive; Lily would still have her brother; and the world would have one less preventable tragedy with which to reconcile.
We are each other’s responsibility. Don’t be afraid to call simply because you might get in trouble or you think that you’re the annoying one at the party, because in the end, you have a responsibility to do what is right. Make the call.
Haze will be shown on October 1 in the Village C Alumni Lounge in conjunction with National Gordie Day on September 24 and the National Hazing Prevention Week.
