NGLA Day 2: Old Friends and New Sessions

The day started off with a keynote speaker who had more energy at 9 AM than I would with 2 Red Bulls in the middle of the day. He had an awesome message about being a leader in the 21st century. It included telling those who we appreciate how much we appreciate them as well as variety of other topics. The best part of this entire keynote was towards the end when it included the 4 questions we needed to ask ourselves as members in order to keep our organizations great. 

After the keynote speaker, we began branching out to our different sessions. 

The first session that I attended was called "Taking Back Our Story". The topic of this session was telling the stories of our lives and sexual assault. The speaker, Tim, was very effective in using his own stories to make a solid point. We have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters to be there for not only our friends, but anyone who needs support, whether we know them or not. 

The second session was about Manhood and society's perception on masculinity. Too often, men are forced to mask their emotions as it is seen as inherently feminine to have emotions. This session talked about how we, as a society, raise young boys to feel the need to prove themselves in their masculinity as we do not let them be comfortable in it. 

In between these two sessions, I ran into a friends from high school, Ethan Lyall! Ethan is now the president of his IFC at Bryant University and a brother of Sigma Chi Fraternity. We caught up for a while and then Ethan joined me at last session later on. Statistically speaking, it is an anomaly to find another person from Hopedale outside of the area we are both from so this was a very awesome moment for me. 

The third session was all about recruiting better men while recruiting more of them. This works by raising our standards to the point where we have a reputation, and they begin to seek us out. This is was an awesome new idea that I really hope I can bring back to BSU! 

The final session, which Ethan joined me on, was called putting the ACT back in ACTive. This was all about keeping our active members engaged with what our organization is trying to accomplish, and making sure that we know why they may become disengaged. 

I really liked today's (now yesterday's) sessions and can't wait to see what tomorrow (new today) holds.