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Colorado Alcohol Abuse: Underage drinking still rampant at Colorado fraternities

Colorado - You may or may not remember the names Samantha Spady or Gordie Bailey. But it's hard to forget the way they died.

The teenagers died within in a month of each other from alcohol poisoning in 2004. Both were found dead inside fraternity houses; Samantha at Colorado State University, Gordie at the University of Colorado.

Their deaths prompted strict new rules for fraternity parties and alcohol. They include no underage drinking, no common sources of alcohol like beer kegs or big bottles of booze, and no drinking games.

But that's not what our undercover investigation revealed when we sent an underage girl inside a CU frat party.

"It was pretty much a free for all--booze for everyone," said the Colorado student.

The 20-year-old visited a CU frat party on a Saturday night in April. She was stopped at the door by private security who asked her for I.D. But it was clear that her age was not going to be an issue.

"It's okay, you don't have to be 21," one of the guards told her. "We've done our job, now you go party."

Security guards used a black magic marker to mark the underage girl's hands with X's -so everyone at the party could clearly see she was under the legal drinking age.

But once inside, her age didn't matter.

"We walked into a room where everybody was passing around alcohol bottles," she said, adding that she was offered three shots of vodka within a few minutes.

She then went to a different room where she was taught how to play a drinking game and offered a beer: a total of 4 drinks within 30 minutes.

The girl didn't actually drink the alcohol she was served, but says if she would have, "I would have been throwing up in the bushes."

We asked Marc Stine, who represents fraternities at the University of Colorado, about the clear violations of school rules.

"Is it realistic to expect fraternities to abide by these rules?," we asked.

"Yeah, it is if they want to have a fraternity," Stine replied.

When we told him we sent an underage girl inside a frat and found the rules were not being followed, Stine said, "I've been waiting for someone to do that for 5 years."

He admitted the amount of alcohol she was offered "was wrong."

Stine insists statistics show CU fraternities are getting less police, fire and noise complaints since Gordie Bailey's death.

When asked if he thought Bailey's family would be upset by this story, Stine said, "ask me if I think they would be surprised. I don't think they'd be surprised."

A spokesperson for the University of Colorado sent us a statement which reads, in part:

IFC fraternities are NOT recognized CU student affiliated organizations, they are off-campus, private organizations that recruit our students; We cannot sanction fraternities and sororities for misconduct, only their national directories can do that. We can discipline individual students for individual acts of misconduct on or off campus, but we have no authority to discipline Greek organizations.