Dying For A Drink

He decided to head to Boston. MIT answered his acceptance with the usual volley of literature, some of it laying out housing options. Soon the frats began recruiting Scott--dozens of phone calls, with tempting offers of trips and parties. The sales pitches were clear: dorms are for girls and dorks, frats are for athletes. Scott, who planned to join the crew and lacrosse teams, studied the housing info during a camping trip to the Adirondacks. Next to the blurbs on each frat, he jotted his impressions in the tight print of an architect: ""Not bad,'' ""Kinda dorky,'' ""Doesn't sound like me.'' Beneath the blurb for Phi Gamma Delta--Fiji, as it's known on campuses nationwide--he wrote, ""More than half varsity. Sounds good!''

Summer brought the usual rites: artfully dodging hard labor and partying with friends. Working as a golf-course groundskeeper, he and a friend mounted weed-whacker wars that left his thighs covered with slashes. The parties sometimes included beer-drinking. Scott's parents didn't know about that, but Kelly saw him once when he'd clearly been drinking.

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, THOUGH, HE grew up on the dry side of average. In Orchard Park, ""the big drinkers identify themselves in a lot of different ways,'' says Wolf. In the months since Scott's death, no other kids have confided that Scott drank regularly. Krueger's friends say that's because he didn't. ""Scott wasn't prepared for a big drinking experience,'' Wolf says. Kelly agrees: ""He had very little, if any, experience with hard liquor before he went to school.'' Scott's parents didn't think they needed to warn him about new risks he might encounter. ""I didn't go to college,'' Bob says. ""There weren't fraternities at Darlene's state teachers college.'' Mostly, he trusted his son's judgment. ""We'd had no trouble with Scott,'' he says. ""My big worry was that he was colorblind--I thought he'd go through a stop sign and hit a tree . . . I wasn't well versed on college life. I didn't think I had to be, with my son going to a place like MIT.''

Scott's family drove him to MIT on Wednesday, Aug. 20. He wasn't required to report until Thursday, but he wanted extra time to look for housing. Fraternity rush began Friday night. That Sunday, he called home to say he wanted to pledge Fiji. ""Whoa! I want to see what this place is like,'' Darlene told him. Scott said there was no time: ""If I don't take the room, someone else will.'' He quickly moved into the house. When his parents visited him the next weekend, they were surprised that Fiji was a 25-minute walk south of MIT's campus.

Fiji had a reputation as one of the hardest-partying fraternities at MIT. In prior school years, Boston police had been called to quell loud bashes, one of them involving a crowd estimated at up to 2,000. (Williams, the MIT dean, says the school temporarily banned alcohol and social activities at Fiji for those offenses: ""It was not a situation that was at all neglected.'' Bill Martin, executive director of Fiji's national headquarters in Lexington, Ky., says he can't respond to allegations until Fiji can complete its own investigation.) There is no evidence that Scott was unhappy with his choice of MIT or Fiji. ""Scott was excited by everything going on at MIT,'' says Kelly. He told Denise Jewell, a friend at Boston University, that Fiji was ""the best fraternity, the best guys.''

The Kruegers don't know what, precisely, happened to their son on Sept. 26. His blood-alcohol level was .41--five times the drunken-driving standard in Massachusetts. A reading that high suggests a rapid infusion of alcohol in toxic quantities that can overwhelm the central nervous system. Richard Schwartzstein, the doctor who oversaw his treatment at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, believes Scott drank beer, Scotch and rum. Attorneys for several fraternity members have declined comment on what happened to Krueger.