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Printer-Friendly ModeModel U.N. team returns victorious
March 1, 2010 —
Students returned last week with awards from the North American Model United Nations’ 25th annual conference at the University of Toronto.
Electrical engineering senior Bryant Barnes and public administration sophomore Joshua J. Roesner were recognized as best delegates in their respective committees.
At the conference, participants engaged in political and legal debate with the goal of reaching compromise resolutions to global problems. SVSU’s students represented Austria and Brazil in conventional U.N. committees and historical committees.
“I improve my debating skills every time I go down there,” Barnes said.
As a delegate on the legal committee, Barnes discussed U.N. peacekeepers and whether they need to be prosecuted when they commit crimes.
“This needed to be brought up as part of international law as opposed to the U.S. perspective of how law works in individual countries,” Barnes said. “It really got into the dynamic of what law is rather than law from the U.S. perspective.”
Roesner, president of the Saginaw Valley Model United Nations, won for his participation in a historical committee. The scenario recreated the Yugoslavian cabinet during the early ’90s when the nation was breaking into separate nations.
“The characters we represented were all fictional,” he said, “[but] the positions were based on actual persons.”
Also attending the conference was political science and history senior Tracy Thiel. Thiel represented the delegate from New Hampshire in a historical scenario recreating the buildup to the American Revolutionary War.
“That was definitely a cool experience,” she said. “At first, we were writing letters to the king and Parliament trying to get them to repeal taxes. . . . [Conditions] were changed, and we were actually planning the Revolutionary War.”
Thiel said the committee director made a few changes to make things interesting.
“It wasn’t by-the-line historic,” she explained. “For example, instead of making George Washington the General of the Continental Army, we chose Caesar Rodney. It was like rewriting American history, which was a fun experience for us.”
Last November, Thiel won recognition as an Outstanding Delegate at the American Model United Nations International conference in Chicago.
“It was the first award that SVSU’s model United Nations won,” she said, “so I was pretty honored by that.”
But the experiences there can be formative for attendees, Thiel said. As a member of the conference’s International Press Association, she heard a keynote from Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who assisted Rwandans during the 1994 genocide.
“He felt that the U.N. didn’t do everything it could do to help in Rwanda. A lot of people agree that the response there was slow,” Thiel said.
According to Thiel, some students return from the conference suddenly skeptical of the UN’s ability to address global concerns.
“It’s tough when you get back because some folks are so disenchanted. They say, ‘We spent so much time setting speaking limits that we didn’t get anything done.’”
Thiel said that, overall though, more students return inspired.
“They see how if you get a collective group of people together like the people in the United Nations, you can really make a difference in what is going on in the world.”