Fort Collins – The room where Samantha Spady died is calming, with moss-green carpet, ferns around beige couches and six stone crosses on the wall.
This is the prayer room, the most peaceful spot in the for mer Sigma Pi fraternity house – a red-brick mansion known a year ago as the place for raging parties and where the Colorado State University sophomore died of alcohol poisoning.
Two dozen Christian youths moved into the house, now known as The Lighthouse, this month. The Sigma Pi letters are gone, the bar has been ripped out of the basement, and new oak covers the floors.
It seemed obvious the room where Spady died wouldn’t become just another bedroom.
“We are in this house because a year ago something horrible happened,” said house director Sarah Laribee. “We never wanted to forget that. It’s really a painful message that death is the enemy and Christ is our salvation.”
Spady died Sept. 5 after drinking vanilla vodka with friends, who brought her to the second-floor room to sleep it off. A week and a half later at the University of Colorado, freshman Lynn “Gordie” Bailey died of alcohol poisoning at the Chi Psi fraternity house after chugging whiskey and wine around a mountain campfire.
The national organizations of both fraternities pulled their charters because of the deaths.
In Boulder, the former fraternity house isn’t what it used to be, either.
Two dozen women, most of them members of a Christian sorority or campus ministry, moved into the white mansion supported by eight regal pillars in time for the start of fall classes Monday. The sisters of Alpha Delta Chi have a strict code: No drinking until 21. No smoking. No premarital sex. Even the girls who aren’t sorority sisters pledged to respect those rules in the house’s common areas.
“There will be partying, yes, but not the stereotypical kind,” said Sarah Meyer, a resident who is not a member of Alpha Delta Chi. “Let’s get some good vibes into the house. We would love to have it be known as a place of joy.”
The sorority sisters were drawn to the house on The Hill, just across the street from campus, because it would bring a Christian influence to Greek row. An organization of Chi Psi alumni owns the house, which is managed by a leasing company.
“There’s so much, like, bad energy directed toward this house because of what happened,” said Tonya Delmez, an Alpha Delta Chi member. “We want to bring up its image.”
The women met one night this week to scrub the house clean and rid it of the grime the fraternity left behind. Still, that fraternity feel might never leave.
A pool table sits in the front common room near leather couches and a big- screen television. The library is dark and a bit dingy, and the black-and- white-tiled kitchen holds a giant steel refrigerator and industrial stove big enough to cook for a house of men.
“We’re still moving in, trying to make it our own,” Tiffany Williams said. “The frat boys kind of tore it up.”
In Fort Collins, fresh paint and new furniture transformed the Sigma Pi house. Timberline Church, which leases the house from owner Lambda Chi fraternity, sank money into it on faith, Laribee said.
Spady’s parents have no financial ties to The Lighthouse but supported the project and toured the house during its final renovations, Laribee said.
Students who live there pay $460 per month and must sign a code of conduct. Alcohol is forbidden, even away from the house. Residents can’t have overnight guests of the opposite sex and aren’t allowed to date one another.
Jared Petsche, 19, transferred from the University of Northern Colorado just to live at The Lighthouse.
“It’s a God thing,” he explained. “It’s just so incredibly sad what happened here. That’s the best part of this house now – we’re going to be working to combat that.”
Rachel Westing, 22, partied at the Sigma Pi house during her first years of college. The CSU senior said she gave up drinking when she gave her life to Christ, and when she heard Timberline Church was transforming the house she knew she wanted to live there.
“I wanted to be a part of something where people didn’t feel judged for where they’re at in their life,” she said.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
