9:33 p.m. — Back at “The Cat’s Meow”
Broadbent walks to a meeting with William Ross, USS executive director-elect.
(Photo: Gavin Jackson)
After a long day of obligations, Broadbent returns home to relax with his friends and play a few games of beer pong. With all the attention focused on him, Broadbent says that sometimes he feels like a celebrity.
“I kind of have a love/hate relationship with it,” Broadbent says. “A lot of people have told me, and I think it’s probably true, that I’m the biggest celebrity (executive director) that the campus has ever had. I’m always on the plasma screen TV, always on TV-2, always being interviewed for the Stater. I try to make myself accessible to the students, and I think because I’ve made myself so accessible, I have kind of a celebrity persona.”
He says it’s fun to be able to talk to a random person who already knows who you are. “But also it kind of wears on me a little bit because I really have to monitor what I do,” he says.
A man known for his partying habits, Broadbent has had to tone down his image.
“I had just been inaugurated as E.D.,” Broadbent says. “I went out for my 21st birthday and got a little sick, like many people do, and as I was outside being sick someone walked by and said, ‘That’s my student body president! My tuition pays his salary!’ And that’s when I knew that things had kind of changed.”
“Without those triumphs and those failures, without the great sense of accomplishment and horrible pit of heartbreak, without the ups and downs, what would you have?”
As executive director, Broadbent’s work never seems to end. But he says he enjoys his job.
“Everything that’s happened to me over the past four years has been a great learning experience,” he says. “Without those triumphs and those failures, without the great sense of accomplishment and horrible pit of heartbreak, without the ups and downs, what would you have? You can’t have sweet without the sour. So, if I had to do it all over again, I don’t think I’d change a thing because I wouldn’t be the person that I am now.”
The Burr is produced by students at Kent State University twice per academic year.No part of The Burr may be reprinted without permission.