Amy Parsons: Hi, I’m Amy Parsons, President of Colorado State University and host of “The Next 150” podcast. We have so many remarkable people in our community, and this is where we’re going to hear their stories. We’re going to get their perspectives on CSU’s next 150 years and gather their very best advice for today’s CSU students. Let’s get started, Rams. Hi again, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of “The Next 150.” I am thrilled to have our guest here with us today, none other than our own Eugene Daniels. Welcome to the studio, Eugene. Thanks for being here.

Eugene Daniels: Thanks for having me.

Amy Parsons: Now, everybody knows Eugene, but he is the President of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which is an amazing honor. I mean, that’s really a testament to the respect that your peer journalists have for you, and congratulations on that. And he’s also the co-host of MSNBC’s “Weekend,” which is an amazing show on Saturday and Sunday. And Eugene has really had a groundbreaking career with Politico. He really helps us not just understand the news, but helps us to care about it, make sense of what’s going on. And of course, Eugene is also a proud Ram, which is what brings him back to campus today. He’s here to be our commencement speaker at our all-university graduation in Canvas Stadium. So we’re super excited to have him back on campus, so.

Eugene Daniels: Excited to be here.

Eugene Daniels: Thanks for being here.

Eugene Daniels: Thank you.

Amy Parsons: You know, I saw a picture of you yesterday of your graduation at Moby Arena, walking across the stage. And I was thinking about what a journey you have had from your own graduation at CSU all the way to being here now about to address all of the students in the football stadium at that graduation. How does that feel to you to be here?

Eugene Daniels: No pressure. It feels really good.

Amy Parsons: Did we tell you it’s like 35,000 people in the stadium, yeah.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, I heard, I heard. I think it is such a testament to the great work that CSU does when the students are here, right? Because there’s no world in which I’m able to host a show or be president of any association or any of the things that I’ve been able to do, and since I’ve been here, 13 years ago is when I graduated this week, without all of the great professors, some of them who are still here, who I’ve been seeing around.

Amy Parsons: I know. 13 years isn’t that long, by the way.

Eugene Daniels: It feels so long.

Amy Parsons: It’s been a little longer for me. I’m an alum too.

Eugene Daniels: So long.

Amy Parsons: We did not overlap.

Eugene Daniels: No, no. But it is being able to get on stage and talk to the students, I remember what that was like. I remember sitting in that seat and so, you know, coming back and being able to try to honor them and the work that they’ve done and give a speech that matches the kind of work that they put into it is exciting. And I just love, I mean, I love FoCo. Like, Fort Collins has been, I come back quite a bit when I come here to Colorado. A lot has changed, a lot hasn’t, which is good, because it still feels like home. It still feels small town with a big university, all the things that brought me to CSU.

Amy Parsons: Yeah, that’s what we love about it, right? I mean, some of the things stay the same, like the Oval and the vibe and, you know, the friendliness of the place, but it also grows and expands and changes with the times.

Eugene Daniels: Exactly.

Amy Parsons: I know that our students are gonna love hearing from you.

Eugene Daniels: I hope so.

Amy Parsons: I’ve got a couple random questions for you, so, pick a little chip out of there and then that’ll tell us what to ask next.

Eugene Daniels: Let’s do this one, okay. Number two.

Amy Parsons: Yes, I was hoping you would pick that one. So when you were here as a student, you were in like student media and you had your own little TV show, “Daniels After Dark.” It sounds a little bit like a dating show, right? “Daniels After Dark.” So if you could come back and do your show over again at CSU, who would you wanna have as a guest?

Eugene Daniels: Okay, so “Daniels After Dark,” we did like part, like jokey thing, like a monologue from like a Jimmy Fallon-

Amy Parsons: Like Late Night?

Eugene Daniels: Exactly.

Amy Parsons: Yeah.

Eugene Daniels: But then we did kind of like an interview that we usually tried to talk to someone in the community who was doing big things. So it would be that. The first that comes to mind would be like Oprah, Beyonce, President Parsons.

Amy Parsons: Hey man. Oh yeah, thanks for putting me in that category, appreciate you.

Eugene Daniels: But, you know, the focus was so in that CTV was such a focus on the community. And so I would do the exact same thing that we did is grab a student that was doing something really interesting. Someone who was representing an organization that was here on campus. Someone who did something fascinating in the community. And we would do them ’cause that’s what CTV and all of that was all about. “Daniels After Dark” man.

Amy Parsons: “Daniels After Dark,” I love it, did you come up with that title yourself?

Eugene Daniels: No, no, the producers did. They were very smart and we could not figure out what to call it. At one point it was just like “The Eugene Daniels Show” and then it was like three o’clock in the morning and we were all there maybe a little drunk, and they go “Daniels After Dark.” And we were like, “That’s it!”

Amy Parsons: That’s it!

Eugene Daniels: That’s it!

Amy Parsons: From “Daniels After Dark” to MSNBC “Weekend,” you know.

Eugene Daniels: Normally, that’s exactly how it works.

Amy Parsons: Very, very like straight line. Let’s talk about how you came to CSU in the first place, ’cause you came for football, right? You came, you were a defensive lineman, I think?

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, I was defensive end. Number 61.

Amy Parsons: Number 61. So talk about that, your journey to CSU and your journey through football that brought you here.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, so I played football in high school in Texas, so very serious high school football.

Amy Parsons: Serious business, yeah.

Eugene Daniels: I had 10 Division I offers to play football and I came to CSU. CSU was the second school that I came to visit. Sonny Lubick was still the coach. I came here and the community that they had built on the team, the community here that supported not just the team but the university and kind of just the feeling of it was, it was like, “Oh,” I was like, “This is what I’m looking for,” right? And at the time, they hadn’t been that good as a team. So it wasn’t even that, like, “I wanna be on a team that’s gonna win everything.” It was like, “I wanna be at a place that made me feel,” like I said, “small town vibes.” A little bit of a familial situation happening. And that’s exactly what I ended up getting. And I’ll never forget when me and my mom were here on our visit, we realized, I was like, “I don’t have, I feel like I don’t, I’m not gonna look good enough.” She took me to the mall, which I think is somewhere, went to the mall.

Amy Parsons: There is a mall over there, yeah, yeah.

Eugene Daniels: And went shopping so I could try to impress the coaches, but-

Amy Parsons: No kidding.

Eugene Daniels: But it was, you know, the thing about with football is I still lean into some of the teachings, which is being on a team and everyone rowing in the same boat. Because now I’m in kind of like this leadership position on our team. Me, my other two co-anchors and our executive producer are like the captains. And then we have like 24 other people who are producers and, you know, APs and doing all of like, a lot of the yeoman’s work. And they’re never seen. And so, like, it always reminded me to create an environment of any team that I’m on where we’re rowing in the same direction, everyone feels bought in. And that’s kind of what I have always taken from my football experience here.

Amy Parsons: Well, and football and athletics provide such a great path for students into college. Right? And I mean, you’re a great example of that. Football’s what brought you in, but the leadership lessons that you learn and, you know, you and I have that in common ’cause Sonny Lubick was the coach when I was here as well. And he was great at creating that atmosphere that brought in great players because they want to be here. And I think now with the transfer portal, there’s students moving around a lot more.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, yep.

Amy Parsons: So that’s really important what you said about go to the place where you have that home and where you can succeed academically.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, the thing that Sonny told us is that he would bring in people who were good kids and work to turn them into great football players and not the other way around. And so, we had the entire freshman class that came in with us, even not just on the football team, all of the athletes that came in, all of us were close and we hung out. And especially when you’re doing two-a-days,  you’re the only people on campus for a little while, it really did create this place where you felt safe, you felt like you had a connection with people. And then when it’s time to knock some heads, like, that was also the exciting part.

Amy Parsons: Let’s do it, yeah, absolutely.

Eugene Daniels: I’ll never forget, I did not understand the CU/CSU like rivalry when I first got here, I wasn’t from Colorado. And so everyone was like explaining it to us. We had some former players come, they like talked us up in a meeting everywhere. I was like, “This is not,” I’m not gonna be like, “I don’t understand this. They’re just another school.” We were at Invesco, I don’t know what it’s called anymore.

Amy Parsons: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eugene Daniels: At Invesco Field, playing-

Amy Parsons: Empower at the Mile Stadium, yeah.

Eugene Daniels: And they walked by and I was like, “Ah!” I was like, so like, it was because we had spent weeks, like, creating this world in which we were a family. And it was like, “Oh, you’re messing with my family. We have an issue.” And so to this day-

Amy Parsons: Those rivalries are important.

Eugene Daniels: They’re very important.

Amy Parsons: They are very important.

Eugene Daniels: They are, they are.

Amy Parsons: And, you know, if we can stick with that theme for a minute, I think that they’re not just important to the team, they’re important to the fandom of college sports and you know, we talk here a lot about democracy and how important it is that we’re producing students who are ready to engage in democracy. And I think that being involved in college sports actually really contributes to that because you look up in the stands of who’s cheering on the players in the field, it doesn’t matter your background, it doesn’t matter your politics, your ideology, in that moment, you are all united in the fandom.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, there’s something that brings everyone together and there’s like this foundation of support for something, right?

Amy Parsons: Yeah.

Eugene Daniels: Not just being against CU, but also, you know, really supporting the team. And I think that that’s such a good connection there to how you can extrapolate that to being a good steward of democracy.

Amy Parsons: Yeah, and you see it in the students to carry forward when they graduate, but you see it in the fans as well.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah.

Amy Parsons: Every age, everybody in there, it cuts across all differences. And people pulling for that. We need that today.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Amy Parsons: Right, like more than ever. And so I think sports, sports in America and college sports, it’s unique to us and it’s uniquely important. So I love that that’s where you come from and that’s the perspective that you carry through and what you do. And you know, take us back to, you know, you were sidelined with an injury in your football career, started really getting into journalism.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, yeah.

Amy Parsons: How did that happen when you were a student?

Eugene Daniels: So I wanted, when I came here, I was going to be a lawyer and then a politician. And that was like my focus. And that was the focus that I had as a kid even when I was a kid and people were like, “Don’t you wanna be a jet pilot or be in the Army like your dad?” And I was like, “No, I wanna be a lawyer so I can yell at people in court.” And I was taking a class called the Politics of Special Interest Groups, which they still have. And the great thing about taking courses and being in college is you realize what you want, perhaps you realize maybe the kinds of things you don’t want to do.

Amy Parsons: Yeah.

Eugene Daniels: And we had this lobbyist talking to us and he was talking about the kinds of things that he had sometimes convinced politicians to do that kind of went against the things that they said they believed. And I just could not imagine myself living in that world. So I had like a very mini panic attack at 20 years old or 19, or whatever I was. Left the class and I’d taken one journalism course and it was like called Media in Society, it was like JTC 100. And it was taught by Pam Jackson, who is still here, she’s back.

Amy Parsons: Still here.

Eugene Daniels: She came to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with me because of this.

Amy Parsons: I heard about that.

Eugene Daniels: I was in her office and we hit it off. She wasn’t actually my advisor ’cause I wasn’t a journalism student. But we’d hit it off. And I said, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I had spent my entire life going with this one goal.” And she said, and I was like, “I was gonna be a politician. I was gonna be the first Black president.” Well, that work didn’t work out for sure. But she looked at me very calmly and said, “Maybe you don’t wanna be a powerful person, maybe you wanna hold powerful people accountable.” And it clicked, like, that changed everything. It made me, it put me on my path to being a reporter, it made me obsessed with journalism and student media. And I went to student media, and along with “Daniels After Dark,” I swear I did other things at student media. And I did CTV and I did the Collegian and College Avenue and KCSU.

Amy Parsons: Wow.

Eugene Daniels: And I was also reminded that I was on, I also sold some ads at one point ’cause I was thinking about selling ads. And so, CSU has created, and you guys have continued this world in which students are allowed to put their hands on a camera, get a notepad, take a podcast mic, and run out and go, right. And like, had I not had that, had Pam not said what she said, and I didn’t have student media, I would not be a reporter today. I would not be hosting a show today because there was, you know, you take the classes and I loved the classes, I will say some of the professors reminded me sometimes I missed a few because I was at student media so much. But you learned the fundamentals in the class, but you learned the practical aspect of it when you were in the actual student media and you had to just go and do it. And it helps. And I’m glad that CSU has continued, I assume will always continue that.

Amy Parsons: Yeah.

Eugene Daniels: Because students need that. They need to be able to have their hands on the thing that they’re gonna be doing in a few years. Otherwise, you won’t know. The people that I was in student media with, they are still, many of them are still being reporters. The folks that were in just the classes and didn’t do student media, they didn’t know what they were getting into when they got into it. And so when they got there, they were like, “Wait a second. I didn’t know it was like this.” But because we did student media, we knew what we were expecting, and it just changed my life.

Amy Parsons: Man. You just beautifully encapsulated so much about the value of being at CSU. Faculty who are invested in you, who, you know, take the time to understand who you are and give you advice to put you on the right path, that’s so important. And to have that mentor. And I love that you took her to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Eugene Daniels: I emailed her, and I was like, “This is so weird, but will you come to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, this is, I’m the president.” She’s like, “I know you’re the president.” And she came and my family got to meet this woman who I’d been talking to, or talking about since I graduated. And so, it was very lovely, it was really lovely.

Amy Parsons: That is amazing. And I’m sure just so gratifying for her to see what you’ve become. And you’re right, that practical application, that’s what we’re all about. And the exploration, finding things you wanna do, finding things you definitely don’t wanna do, and so when you’re ready to hit the ground running, you’re ready.

Eugene Daniels: Exactly.

Amy Parsons: Journalism is an area, though, that keeps changing, different mediums, you know, I mean, how you’re communicating with people, how people consume the news and understand the world. So, you know, would you encourage students to go into that area now

Eugene Daniels: Oh my God, yes. So I believe deeply, and I learned this belief here, that every person in this country and around the world deserves someone paying attention to their elected leaders. They deserve someone who is telling stories for people who can’t tell those stories for themselves. And that’s what journalism is about. Those two things. That’s how I have always operated. And it’s hard, sometimes it’s scary, right? Like, you see attacks on the press, I’ve been attacked. You get used to it after a while, actually. Shockingly. But I still believe that a democracy has to have a free press and a strong free press who is holding powerful people accountable and asking them what they’re doing in the name of the voters who put them there. They’re spending the money of the voters who don’t have a lot of money to spend. And they’re spending that money and doing things in their name and on their dime, and it’s important for reporters to be there, to hold them accountable. And that’s on the national level where I’m at, which is great and it’s hard work and it’s a tussle. It’s fun, but also on the local level. I was with some CTV students today and we were talking about, you know, what are they doing next? And they’re like, “I want to go national.” I said, “Go local. Because one, you get to make a lot of mistakes on local that you cannot make on the national level. But the people on the local level also deserve for the mayor, the city council, the county commissioners to have eyes on them.” And the way that journalism is changing, which is so concerning, is there’s less and less spaces and less and less jobs where folks are doing that, where they’re focusing on the local stories, where they’re holding the local leaders accountable. So that means that in our democracy, there’s corruption going unfettered and unpaid attention to, because of the jobs that have been lost. Now, I say that to say, you should still go and do the job because it’s fulfilling. And I feel, it doesn’t feel like just a job, it feels like it’s a calling. It surrounds me all the time. It is a belief system. And everyone that I know that’s still in it, in journalism for the right reasons, they feel the exact same way. And so I’d say, join us, keep us accountable, make us tougher, and then teach us also because there’s so many new things happening that the kids gotta teach us how to do it.

Amy Parsons: Yeah. Well, I mean, you’re in a fascinating position to have a front row seat to what’s going on, a front row seat to democracy. And I personally worry that a lot of our students are gonna be turned off from going into politics and journalism right now because it is so polarized. So, what would you say to them who are, you know, I worry about our best and brightest not going into politics and we need ’em to be doing that more than ever.

Eugene Daniels: Yeah, the reason that it’s been so polarized and that the incentive structure is off in a lot of our politics is because we’re losing good people, right? There are a lot of good people from both sides of the aisle who have been in Washington D.C., whether for a long time or they popped in because they wanted to be a member of Congress and they wanted to make a difference. And the incentive structure is so off that they were like, “I’m not doing this.” But what we need is people to say, “No, I’m here to fix it. I’m coming here to help make this better.” And so, for the students that want to continue to be a politician or that had that dream, and now it seems a little off because of what is going on and what they see in the media and what they hear from the leaders themselves, you can be better, you can be different. And I think one of the things that is like constantly on my mind when I talk to young people is like, “Be better than we were.” Be better ’cause our hope was that we were better than the folks that came before us. So my hope for them is go in, actually make the change. If you want it bad enough, get the coalition together, fix the thing, because this country deserves it. And I think the voters and the people that maybe people don’t even vote, they’re just here in this country, need folks who will put their neck on the line and not see their families to try to make this country a better place. And doing that is actually more, you will feel better about yourself. It’ll be hard and it’s tough. But when I talk to politicians who got in for the right reasons and are staying for the right reasons, they know that, they feel that. And I think that’s something that folks should be able to take from what I’m saying and from what some of these other politicians are saying. Not everyone is going to be a bomb thrower on my show or come to fuss on CNN, or something like that. A lot of the members of Congress are there to just work. And like, there’s still opportunities to do that. And there’s also, just like with journalism, there’s local politics which is also just as important.

Amy Parsons: Yeah, and those are the role models that we want our students to see. And what we’re hoping that they find those opportunities when they’re here at Colorado State to work with people who are very different from them, who have very different perspectives, different politics, come from different places, and they learn to open up their ears and to listen to that, it’s okay to change your mind about things, it’s okay to have different opinions about things, and work together to find solutions. That’s who we need to be looking for right now, so students know how to do that when they get out of college.

Eugene Daniels: Well, like people, when you’re discussing something with, pick a topic, any topic, and you’re having a conversation with someone who disagrees with you or maybe grew up differently than you, and so has a different perspective, it makes you better. If you think you really believe that thing, having someone try to poke holes in it is actually a better training ground than sitting around with a bunch of people who believe it too, right? Having someone say, “Okay, but have you ever thought about it like this?” Or “Have you ever thought about this community who is actually impacted negatively because of the thing that you believe?” Or “What about the people that we’re not even thinking about who never get a seat at the table, never have a representative that’s backing them.” Those conversations are healthy.

Amy Parsons: Yeah.

Eugene Daniels: And I, you know, I’m very lucky that my friends and my coworkers, I’m just always surrounded by contrarians and people who disagree with me because it actually makes when I go on television and give my analysis, I know that I’ve done, I’ve been beat down by my friends and my colleagues to actually say, “Okay, is that actually what you believe? Is that your read of this situation, truly?”

Amy Parsons: And people can’t believe you in that unless we know that you’ve done that.

Eugene Daniels: Exactly.

Amy Parsons: And looked at all of those different things. So I’m curious, I mean, it’s a personal question, but what you’ve learned about yourself and your ability to change and be open-minded and learn about different people’s positions from the time you started at CSU to where you are today.

Eugene Daniels: Well, so much of it happens in college, right? Because when you’re in high school, you all either, I was a military brat, so we bounced around a lot and everyone I went to school with was a military brat. But you basically have the same background, right? When you come to, especially a place like Colorado State, you will have people from all over the place.

Amy Parsons: All over the world, yeah.

Eugene Daniels: And so that forces you, the second that you get here, you meet somebody from a different country that you’ve never, maybe you’ve never even heard of. Or someone from South Dakota, which is where my husband’s from. But like, you know, I never met anyone from South Dakota until I got to CSU. And those kinds of things, the eye-opening experiences you can have, the conversations you can have, the camaraderie, the fights, the tussling, all of that is important in growing. And so I think what I’ve learned about myself from just that whole time is that to always be open and to be curious and not judgemental. And you know, I don’t know if you’ve seen “Ted Lasso,” but there’s an episode of “Ted Lasso” where he says, “There’s just two types of people.” I think there are more types of people, but the point is that there are, you can be judgmental or you can be curious.

Amy Parsons: That’s the dart-throwing episode.

Eugene Daniels: Yes, the dart throwing! Exactly, exactly.

Amy Parsons: Yes, I know exactly the one.

Eugene Daniels: And so he says, you know, “If you were curious about me, you would know that I played darts with my dad growing up.” And that’s why he beat him. And so it’s the same concept, right? Is that at the end of the day, you can go through life judging people, that’s your prerogative, do you. You can go through life saying, thinking you’re better than everyone, or thinking that your ideas are the only ones that are important, or you can be curious. And as a reporter, as a journalist, I am always, both implicitly and explicitly curious, my mother likes to say I’m nosy, but always wanting to know what’s going on in other people’s heads, why they do the things they do, why they believe the things that they believe. And that was reinforced here, especially in the journalism department, which was going out and talking to people, right? And it wasn’t even, it wasn’t about like go and force them to prove what they believe, it was ask them what they believe. And nowadays, especially when I go to a Trump rally, or a Biden rally, or a Harris rally, or, you know, I’m following some random congressional candidate, when I’m talking to their voters, I’ve seen reporters come and be judgemental. And try to demand that they defend the views of the person that they support. My job, I think, is to come and be curious. Ask them why they believe the things they believe, ask them if they’ve seen the things that that person has been saying. Because, and the interactions I’ve had are always a little different than the people who come at it judgmentally because all of us basically just want someone to say they see us. Like, that’s the whole, that’s, like, the one question that we’re all trying to answer in life is like, “Do you see me? Does anybody see me?” Because life can be very lonely. And what I get to do in my job is to see someone for 15, 20 minutes that we’re talking to them and let them know that like the thing that they believe, it might be different than what a lot of people believe, but like, let’s talk about it. Let’s see why you believe that. What is the thing that is moving you? And what you often find, especially in our world where there’s like a lot of hate, what’s under that is fear. When I’m talking to people and they’re talking about folks that they hate and they don’t wanna see in this country, or they don’t wanna see in their rooms or their bathrooms or whatever, it is the fear that is under that. And so you can yell at them if you want, if you’re another voter and not try to convince them. But that’s not gonna happen. So if you can be curious and talk to them, find some common ground, and if you can’t convince them, then maybe you don’t know what you’re doing. Like, that is, I think, like, it’s so important to be able to have conversation.

Amy Parsons: Yeah, well, we can’t wait to see you do this on your show on “The Weekend.” I mean, it’s obvious why they hired you to do this show.

Eugene Daniels: Thank you.

Amy Parsons: And I am a little bit curious about what your process is when you’re getting ready for a big interview with somebody who’s really important on that show and how you prepare yourself to bring that curiosity and that openness to that interview on national television.

Eugene Daniels: I’m very lucky, we have a great team. And so we start on Wednesday, well, we start earlier than that, but, like, Wednesday when we have like the first meeting of, okay, what do we think is gonna be on this show? It’s the senior producers, the EP, and the anchors. And a lot can change between Wednesday and Saturday. So it’s very preliminary.

Amy Parsons: Yeah, I bet.

Eugene Daniels: So it’s more like, what are the themes of this week? Like, what are the things that are on our mind? Is there reporting that I have that I wanna share on the show? Is there a guest that I really want? And we kind of just build it from there, and it’s my favorite thing about journalism is you like sit down in front of a blank page or like a rundown that’s blank and you just like fill it in. And then people are allowed to judge for themselves and it’s such a creative process and terrifying at the same time ’cause now so many more people are watching than they were before. And I think my own process before I go on the show is a lot of prep, like, I spend a lot of time reading, watching their interviews, right? Because my goal is to get them to say something they haven’t said before, which is very difficult with politicians.

Amy Parsons: Yeah.

Eugene Daniels: And to ask it in a way that gives an answer that a person in their district deserves to actually hear them answer that question. And I also like listen to music before to kinda just like calm myself. I sit down, I take a deep breath, and then like we just get to do it. And once you do all that prep, and this is with every job, you do all the prep, and then when you actually have to do the job, it’s actually just like fun. There’s three of us at a table, we bring people in and out, whether they’re members of Congress or advocates, activists, and you get to have conversation. And that is, I think my favorite thing about our show is it’s three hours, which is a long time. Three hours on Saturday, three hours on Sunday, 7:00 to 10:00 on MSNBC. But you get to just talk. And sometimes, and I learned this here again, is you have all the questions you want, this is what I want to get to, this is what I’m trying to get this person to say, so I’m demanding from this member of Congress. And then sometimes you just have the conversation, you’re like, “Okay, well, let’s just allow the conversation to happen.” I think that’s been kind of most fun is like watching the conversation mold before your own eyes. Because like, we had this plan, this is where we wanted to go, but oh my God, they just said something so interesting, so we’re picking up on that. And you go down that direction. It’s like a journey that you get to kind of go on together.

Amy Parsons: Wow, that’s a really amazing talent that you have for doing that.

Eugene Daniels: Thank you.

Amy Parsons: Obviously, one of the best in the country and best in the business. And, you know, just know that when you’re on those shows, Saturday, Sunday morning, you got a lot of Ram fans out here watching you and cheering you on.

Eugene Daniels: Thank you.

Amy Parsons: And we’re so, so proud of you and we’re so happy that you’re back here to share your wisdom with our graduates. They’re gonna be so inspired by your journey. And I’m just personally inspired by what you do and it’s just incredible. You continue to invest in CSU students and setting that example for them. So just in closing, and I don’t wanna have a spoiler alert with what you’re gonna say for your big speech tomorrow, but, you know, students are our priority here, student success. So what advice might you share for the students, either the graduates or the students who are just starting their journey at CSU?

Eugene Daniels: For every single one of them, and for some of the older folks who need to hear it too, this is the kind of title of my speech. The theme is, you belong in every single room you find yourself in. And it’s something that my mother said to us when we were kids, which, when you’re a kid, you like have no idea what that means. And then you start finding yourself in rooms and you’re like, “Oh wait, I know what she was talking about. She was talking about not letting imposter syndrome stop me from being in this room and being my full self. Whether that means nail polish, high heels, and a big afro like I do, or just whatever.” And I think every student should know that the rooms that you think you want to be in and that going to CSU is going to allow you access to, those rooms are not full of these like Einsteins all the time, right? You are bringing something to that table, that’s why you’re there. And I think the more of those rooms that I go in, I’m like, “Oh, this is what y’all were keeping us from? This is why the door’s closed?” And so, like, to the students, like be yourself. Fully invest in who you are and understand what your why is. And when you have all of that, you can go in any of these rooms, you can go be a doctor, you can be a lawyer, you can go and, you know, do something in agriculture. There are all these jobs out there in the world, you can be a teacher, and at the end of the day, if you go in as your full self, you can go to bed at night. Right, like, that’s how, like, I came out at 27 well after I left college. And what I told myself and how I’ve tried to live is I will never be not me. Like, I will never again try to pretend to be someone else. And the second that I did that, my world opened, my head had more space for work, my head had more space for questions that I wanted to ask members of Congress, had more space for love for my family. And once you do that, that opens everything and it kind of gives you like a beautiful kind of path. And, you know, I came out and then I immediately started interviewing members of Congress and like, just like things kind of changed from there. And it’s not, and I see those as very connected and I was able to do that because I was reminded all the time that you belong in every single room you find yourself in, you belong, you deserve to come to the table as you are. And if you don’t, if the table doesn’t want you, go somewhere else, that’s okay. Not every table is for you, not every room is for you. Not everybody deserves the pleasure of your company. You know?

Amy Parsons: That’s true.

Eugene Daniels: Not everybody deserves you. Not everyone’s gonna get you, and that’s okay. And I think the thing that I got from CSU was the kind of wherewithal to say, “Okay, not my room.” You know what I mean? Not my room. I’m not supposed to be in this room. I’m gonna go, I’m gonna find a room, I’m gonna go build a room. Not very handy, but you know, we will kick down a door, I’ll bring a table.

Amy Parsons: Butt some heads.

Eugene Daniels: Exactly, I’ll sit in the hallway. And I think that that’s what I would tell students is like, be fine with being yourself because that’s the only way you’re gonna make a change in this world.

Amy Parsons: Wow. Well that’s a perfect way to end and that’s a perfect message to our students. Thank you for sharing that and for spending this time with us today.

Eugene Daniels: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Amy Parsons: Are you kidding me?

Eugene Daniels: We had breakfast –

Amy Parsons: We did have breakfast.

Eugene Daniels: – some time ago and you were like, “We’re gonna have to get you back here.” You didn’t say it as a commencement speaker to everybody that graduated.

Amy Parsons: But I was thinking it, I was thinking it.

Eugene Daniels: Yes, vision, vision.

Amy Parsons: I appreciate you making the time, I know how busy you are. This is really important. You’re such an inspiration.

Eugene Daniels: Thank you.

Amy Parsons: So hopefully, Rams, you paid attention to that great advice to invest in yourself and you do belong in every room that you find yourself in. Thank you, Eugene Daniels, amazing Ram. Thank you for listening. I’m Amy Parsons, President of Colorado State University, and you’re listening to CSUs “The Next 150,” where we explore what comes next for CSU by chatting with change-makers who are already leading the charge and shaping our next 150 years. I’m gathering their very best advice for today’s CSU students. Stay tuned to wherever you get podcasts for our next outstanding conversation, go Rams.