Greetings from New Haven, Connecticut!

I remember it exactly. It was Tuesday, September 11, 2001 and it was my second week of classes at the University of Minnesota. My freshman year. I was lying in bed, on the 3rd floor of the Beta chapter house, listening to the cars and ruckus of a Tuesday morning as everyone hurried to their first class of the day along University Avenue. I didn't have my first class until 2pm, Biology 1001--so as I enjoyed my "morning off". All of a sudden I got a phone call from my buddy from high school. Him: "Turn on the TV". Me: "What do you mean? Why?" Him: "Just do it". I turned on the tv in my small room and I was awe struck. I couldn't believe my eyes. A plane had just struck the second tower of the World Trade Center. A memory etched in my head forever.

As I was driving from Storrs this morning I couldn't help but reflect on that day--that moment--the feelings of fear, anxiety, and helplessness creeped over me. Why had so many people needlessly lost their lives that day? What if I were on the plane? In one of those buildings? It just doesn't make sense.

After visiting the WTC site last year I noticed one thing. In all of the commotion and day-t0-day rhetoric of lower Manhattan, ground zero might has well have been in a secluded location off in the mountains somewhere. It was so quiet--so eerily peaceful. The souls of all those who had perished on that day seemed to ly silent in the concrete garden that surrounded that hallowed place. Five years....
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Today I will be meeting with the Yale chapter. As is typical fashion, I am in a Starbucks on the edge of Yale University. I had a great weekend in Connecticut. I don't consider my visit to UConn as a chore or work per se, but more of a visit with friends. Yesterday was a long day of goal setting meetings, education presentations, and chapter meetings--but the boys powered through and they were so appreciative of me being there and working with them. They get it! Why can't more chapters "get it"? All I want is to have one more chapter that gets it. But no, I continue to work talented men who have no idea what fraternity is about. I go to Yale, MIT, Cornell, Colgate, Columbia, and Wesleyan--all great students, with, supposedly, the most talented minds in the world--but you wouldn't know it by the way they run their chapters.

This is going to be a busy week, but one thing I know about busy weeks is that that fly by. Which can be a good and bad thing. I'm out to write some reports, and do some catch-up work.

-T