Three Minutes with "The Dean"

Yesterday provided a neat opportunity for me. As a part of Creating Chapters of Excellence (the fraternity/sorority program I oversee), I was able to coordinate a reception for Howard Dean in one of the Fraternity houses. Yep. . that's Howard Dean, former Presidential candidate, "Yeaaaaawwwwh" man, and newly elected leader of the Democratic National Committee. Pretty cool, I thought. . .for the students on such a "liberal" campus, and pretty cool for me too.

So, before I headed down to Sigma Pi, where the reception was held, I thought to myself, "Gee, if I get time to talk to Howard Dean what would I say? What questions would I want answered? What would I want him to know about that concerns me with politics and the Democratic Party today?" If you had three minutes with "The Dean" how would you spend it? After a bit of reflection, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. . .I grabbed what I needed, and off I went.

The reception went very well in my opinion. Howard Dean arrived on time and during the event made the expected jokes about life in a fraternity house. . . "Gosh its clean, does it look like this all the time?" "Where is the keg?", etc. Sigh. . . this is one of the reasons we are trying to have more events like this in fraternity and sorority houses more often. Get people though the doors at the right time and at the right event, people might actually start viewing fraternities and sororities as valuable organizations to have on campus. . . . but I digress.

I did get my three minutes with Howard Dean. And I chose to spend that time talking about Rich's experience in Iraq and what I am learning outside of the mainstream media thanks to Rich's blog. I know that Howard Dean's early presidential candidate support was as a result of technology, the Internet, and the growing number of blog users. Certainly, this was a man from Washington that could appreciate how Rich chose to communicate to us back home and his story of Iraq from an unfiltered perspective.

I encouraged Gov. Dean to visit Rich's blog site and gave him one of my business cards with Rich's name, unit, and blog address on the back of it. Shameless promotion for the man I love. . . absolutely! No doubt about it. He seemed genuinely interested in what Rich was experiencing and sharing with others. He mentioned that he connects with a solider in Afghanistan that has a blog on a regular basis too. First hand accounts are a good thing for all of us over here, he said. Exactly the point I wanted to make. In our conversation he thanked Rich and he thanked me for "our" service. That caught me off guard. . .I didn't expect to be in the list of his thanks. I was not the one over there actually serving. But it was nice to be recognized for what is a rather complicated life right now.

So my three minutes with Howard Dean were well spent. We did not talk politics; I didn't share my opinions on what he needed to do to "save" the Democratic Party. I chose instead to offer my story. . .and Rich's story. A good story can influence the hearts of men a lot faster than spouting off fact, figures, or debates about who is right and who is wrong. Personal stories are how change begins.

I also asked another favor from Gov. Dean, and he proudly accepted. Rich should be getting a fun piece of mail from one of his newest fans in the next week.


Note: for those of you who forgot, Rich's blog address is: http://richbrowntod.blogspot.com/ And maybe we need to start looking for some kind of comments made by a Dr. H. Dean!