Most current Kent State students probably don’t recognize his name, but at one point, Beder was one of the most visible undergraduates on campus as a student senator. As executive director, he received praise as a leader of the Senate who made cohesiveness and productivity a priority.
“He was never opposed to putting and idea we had on the table,” says Nic Smith, who served as governmental affairs senator with Beder and succeeded him as executive director. “He always supported what we as senators wanted to do.”
Smith says he learned how to be an effective executive director from Beder.
“A lot of what I did, he influenced,” he says. “He put forth a lot of effort to keep good relationships within the Senate. That’s a lot of what an executive director is supposed to do, rather than work on your own projects.”
In the spring 2000 semester, Beder decided on 8 a.m. weekly Senate meetings, the only time everyone could get together.
“He didn’t like doing it, he knew it would hurt attendance,” Smith says. “But he helped push our agendas forward and we had to do it.”
Despite high praise, Beder didn’t quite fit the mold of a campus politician, and he continues to defy the archetype of small business entrepreneurs. His degree is in general studies, not political science or economics. (He informally created his own major, “entrepreneurship,” he says, heavy in advertising, public relations and business management.) He doesn’t have any grand plans for his career path, and his grade-point average was downright mediocre.
“I didn’t have all the answers when I was in school,” Beder says. “Wouldn’t it be perfect, if you could find out what you wanted to do, then get taught how to do it, not the other way around?”
Joe Dangelo, a Kent State alumnus and friend of Beder’s, doesn’t want to say he had “better” things to worry about, but he always had something on his mind besides class.
“School wasn’t what he was always focused on,” Dangelo says. “He was always doing something else. But I don’t know anyone else who could have done what he’s done with that bar. He’s not dumb -- he’s a smart, sharp guy.”
Leaving, then coming back
While in college, Beder says he could never quite pinpoint how he wanted to spend his life. When he graduated, he landed a job in Atlanta promoting Buick cars as a part of the General Motors brand’s sponsorship of the Professional Golf Association Tour.
Just a few month of traveling the country, working in Chicago one week and Phoenix the next, was enough.
“I didn’t like the job at all,” he says. “I got homesick real quick. A job like that, you’ll never be able to establish roots. It sounds like a totally romantic idea, but the reality of traveling like that is that you’re by yourself. You go from knowing everyone and knowing campus like the back of your hand to that. It was total culture shock.”
So he returned to Kent. He worked as a valet at Tanglewood Country Club in Chagrin Falls before he got the idea for a bar. The situation wasn’t ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but he was back among friends. And for those who know him today, just “knowing people” is part of his identity.
In his free time, Beder continues to serve on the Big Brothers and Big Sisters board of directors. He’s also president of his fraternity’s alumni council, vice president of the Greater Cleveland Chapter of the Kent State Alumni Association, a memer of the Greek Alumni Council and the Kent Chamber of Commerce.
“Of course, the bar consumes a majority of my time for sure,” he says, planning at least 50 hours a week at the business. “But I still don’t know what I want to do with myself, so I try a taste of everything. I keep busy.”
The only catch: Every three or four months he gets a reminder to slow down, courtesy of his girlfriend, fellow Kent State graduate Melissa Gottschalk.
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