Last Thursday, the former governor of Vermont, presidential candidate and chairman of the Democratic National Committee Dr. Howard Dean visited campus. The event took place in the Levin Ballroom and was organized by Brandeis Democrats Vice President Justin Backal-Balik '10. The event was sponsored by the Brandeis Democrats, Democracy For America, Gen Ed Now and the Activist Resource Center. "As the former chair of Students for Obama, I wanted to bring Dean to emphasize that the election of 2008 was only a beginning," said Backal-Balik in an e-mail to the Justice after the event.

Dean dedicated the majority of his time to speaking about young people and comparing their experiences to both the achievements and mistakes of his own generation.

"Your generation is the first multicultural generation in the history of America," said Dean in his speech. "Your generation grew up with lots of different kinds of people. We believed in a different world, but we didn't live in a different world. You live in the world that we envisioned."

In an interview with the Justice before his speech, Dean said he and his campaign supporters learned Internet strategies "by watching you do all those things." Dean explained in his speech that technologies like Meetup, as well as modern tools like YouTube and Facebook, were not originally created for politics but were later adapted for campaigns.

Differences between cultures matter to the youth of today, according to Dean. "Differences matter more to us than they do to you ... You are truly a multicultural generation. You have friends who are openly gay. . In fact, LGBT issues is actually the civil- rights issue of your generation."

Dean dedicated time to speak about the problems he thought his conservative Republican friends faced, saying, "As long as the Republican M.O. is to point fingers at immigrants, Hispanics, people of color, gay people, those are your friends, those are you. And if somebody's pointing a finger at your friend trying to demonize him in order to win, you are never going to vote for him. They have no chance."

Dean also discussed parent-child relationships in his speech, saying, "There's not the confrontation, there's sort of a mutual agreement. I think our kids are more willing to listen to us, and I think the reason for that's because we're more willing to listen to our kids. And respect is reciprocal."

In the interview before the event, Dean rated Obama's performance so far. "I think the last six or seven weeks before the health care debate, he was fantastic. The first year was pretty rocky: There were a lot of mistakes that were made, a lot of assumptions, but in the end of the day he got what he had to get done."

When asked by the Justice why there are so many doctors in Congress, Dean responded "I wouldn't know." He went on to point out that "Most of the doctors in Congress, unfortunately, are right-wing Republicans, so I think they function and think differently than people like me."

Throughout his speech, Dean stressed to students the importance of being politically active.

"We can't tune out, as Gov. Dean said," noted Backal-Balik in an e-mail to the Justice, "and with the midterm elections approaching, I think that's a message that needs to be heard, not just on this campus but across the country.