Background
On the evening of September 16, 2004, Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr. ("Gordie") and twenty-six other Chi Psi pledges dressed in coats and ties for "bid night" were taken blindfolded to the Arapaho Roosevelt National Forest where they were told to consume four 1.75 liter bottles of 80-proof Ten High Bourbon Whiskey and six 1.5 liter bottles of Carlo Rossi wine around a bonfire in 30 minutes. Older active fraternity men stated to the group that “no one is leaving here until these are gone.” When the group returned to the Fraternity house, Gordie was visibly intoxicated and did not drink any more. He was placed on a couch to “sleep it off” at approximately 11:00pm. Later in the evening, while Gordie was unconscious, his brothers used permentent markers to scrawl demeaning sayings and pictures on all parts of his body. Gordie was left alone for 10 hours before he was found dead the next morning, face down on the floor.
Read more about this topic: The Gordie Foundation
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)