Nebraska: Go Big Red

My First Trip to Lincoln…

I just returned from spending two fantastic busy days in Lincoln. I was invited to the University of Nebraska Lincoln to speak for Greek Week and give a keynote on diversity. Of course when I travel I like to stay busy, meet lots of students and try to make an impact on campus. I don’t travel just to give a keynote, I travel to make a difference and the more time I have with students the better.

For campuses that have never booked me here is what I did in Lincoln…

Sunday
2PM to 5PM – MGC Recruitment & Council Strategic Planning
5PM to 6PM – Dinner with MGC Executive Board Members
7PM to 9PM – Speech @ Greek Involvements Awards

Monday
10AM to 12PM – Consulting with Greek Life Staff

MGC Hard At Work

12PM to 1:30PM – Lunch with IFC/Panhel/MGC/NPHC Executives
5PM – 6PM – Abuelitas Hands Presentation
7PM to 8PM – Your Greek Legacy (Greek Week Keynote on Diversity)

So as you can see I like to be busy, I like to get to know the students, and find ways to connect and make my message custom for their campus. When you keynote for 45 minutes, it is hard to think you can make a difference… but if you spend time to ensure that what you say will connect directly to them it will be more impactful.

I enjoyed my time with MGC, the Greek Life Staff and as always I love doing the Abuelitas Hands presentation. I am slowly getting more and more comfortable sharing that emotional story. I love seeing how that story truly it OUR story, the story of American Immigrants and how others relate to it so well.

The culmination program of my trip was in the Lied Center… wow it was a huge room. No matter how many times I do this, rooms like that get intimidating, there were over 2000 Greeks in attendance to hear my presentation. Diversity isn’t an easy topic, and a topic I shied away from for years as I didn’t know what I would say. Just being a minority doesn’t qualify me to talk about diversity. Well now I have a message, and the diversity issues over the past couple semesters in Greek Life have motivated me to get out there and try to start making a difference.

Lied Center… it got packed!

I talked about my perspective on diversity training… and mostly all Greek Life training… that we need to stop doing defensive programming and get on offense. We spend lots of time talking about “Don’t Do This, Don’t Do That, Stop Doing This…” all built on the assumption that our groups are bad and are on the brink of a major issue on campus. Why don’t we make the talk built on the assumption that our groups are good, and are on the brink of doing something great on campus? Is that so hard? I mean to think our groups can do GREAT things… instead of just hoping they don’t do BAD things? We have to raise the expectation from accident avoidance to targeting greatness. Greeks were meant to #BeBold and change the world, not to be timid and avoid mistakes.

We dropped a big idea on them… and I hope it sticks, and I hope they follow through. The idea came from their campus, and potential solutions came from their students… I just got to be the guy on the mic that told everyone else about it. I hope to see it happen, and when it does, I plan to be back in Lincoln to see the progress. #RenameTheRez