DRUG DEATH SHOCKS COLLEGE IN HARTFORD

By 7:30 a.m. last Friday, the first day of spring break at Trinity College,
a small private school atop a gentle hillside here, had already begun
spinning terribly out of control.

The police had just picked up William B. Bachman, a Trinity senior, after
he ran his car into a fire hydrant, and delivered him to a West Hartford
hospital to be treated for possible drug ingestion. Within hours, Mr.
Bachman's roommate, Joshua B. Eaves, arrived, also suffering from what
looked like a drug-induced illness, the police said. At 12:24 p.m., a third
roommate, Josh Doroff of Harrison, N.Y., was carried unconscious by three
friends into the hospital's emergency room, where doctors pronounced him dead.

In their dormitory room minutes later, the police found a fourth roommate,
Clement Kaupp 3rd, lying unconscious, also apparently suffering from an
overdose of drugs. After spending three days in critical condition
perilously close to death, Mr. Kaupp regained consciousness today, and his
condition had stabilized, the police said.

By all accounts, Mr. Kaupp, 22, of Menham, N.J., is lucky to be alive.
According to one of the three surviving roommates, the four men had begun
celebrating their weeklong vacation by consuming various amounts of heroin
and prescription drugs, including Xanax, an antianxiety medication; Valium;
butalbital, which is prescribed for migraines, and sleeping pills, said Dr.
Mary McCormick, the administrative director of the Connecticut Poison
Control Center. The police say the men may also have been drinking.

"You take any one of those drugs and they will depress the central nervous
system," Dr. McCormick said. "You introduce alcohol to that mix and you've
got a pretty potent combination that could induce a coma."

On Saturday, Mr. Bachman, of South Natick, Mass., and Mr. Eaves, of
Dowington, Pa., were arrested on felony drug possession charges, according
to state Superior Court records. Mr. Eaves was released after he posted a
$20,000 surety bond; Mr. Bachman, who was also charged with driving while
intoxicated, paid a $25,000 bond in cash, records show.

Both men are to be arraigned on March 31 in Superior Court, a spokeswoman
in the court clerk's office said.

Mr. Kaupp, who was "up and walking around" by this afternoon, is likely to
face felony drug charges, Sergeant Huertas said.

If the death of Mr. Doroff, a popular senior majoring in economics, stunned
Trinity's 1,900 students, most of whom had left the campus by today for
their spring break, news of their drug-laden night of partying has left
school officials issuing urgent calls to students to stay away from drugs
and alcohol.

On Saturday, less than 24 hours after Mr. Doroff was pronounced dead,
college administrators sent out urgent e-mail and voice mail messages to
all students, and mailed letters to each student's home address, informing
students and their parents about the incident, said Linda S. Campanella,
Trinity's senior vice president.

Officials also sent employees Saturday to each of the college's 990
dormitory rooms to check on students, even waking those asleep to ensure
that they were all right.

The Hartford police and the Hartford state's attorney are investigating
where and how the four students acquired the drugs. A weekend search of the
four men's living quarters, in a red-brick high-rise south of the Trinity
campus, revealed residue of several substances, said Sgt. Norberto A.
Huertas, a commander in the major crimes department of the Hartford police.
He would not elaborate on what those substances were, but he did say,
"Heroin was involved in this incident."

Today, in several interviews on and off the Trinity campus, students said
drugs were a common ingredient at many parties.

"There's a lot of recreational drug use on campus," said Michelle Fabiani,
18, a freshman from Wallingford, Conn. "Trinity is kind of like a rich
kid's school, so kids may have more money to buy drugs." Tuition is $31,380
a year.