Students work together to better understand international issues, speaking skills and UN procedures.
PATRICIA MARTINEZ
Staff Writer
With a love of diplomacy and a desire to resolve the problems of the world, members of Pepperdine’s Model United Nations traveled to Anaheim last Saturday to participate in a MUN conference for college-level members of the organization.
Participants attempt to resolve the problems afflicting the world today and write resolutions from the perspective of different countries as accurately as possible.
The MUN program has been on campus for three years and has nearly 20 members. Dr. Robert Lloyd, International Studies and Languages division chair, serves as the club’s sponsor, and Kristin Paulson is president.
Students who wanted to participate in the MUN first met with the Paulson in September where the intensity of the work was explained. Students who still wished to join were then asked to pay the deposit for the annual Anaheim competition, ensuring their participation. The purpose is for newcomers (now delegates for a certain country) to gain experience by participating in an actual conference.
At the Anaheim conference, the students are judged based on how well they followed procedure, knew their country and how accurately they represented it, as well as their delivery of speeches and their ability to pass resolutions.
All the practice that the students engage in is for the big competition in New York held by the National Collegiate Conference Association in March. The New York competition is four days long, with the students from more than 200 schools working eight hours a day. Compared with the one-day Anaheim competition, the New York event is colossal.
“It is the most professional and competitive conference in the world,” Paulson said.
Unlike the Anaheim conference where the students are assigned a country, the New York competition in March requires the whole team to participate as one country or organization which is then divided by committees. The team requests a country beforehand based on their school’s size and history in the competition. Schools that have a long established history in the competition are usually assigned major countries and have an advantage over schools like Pepperdine, which has only been competing for three of years.
“The training and competition definitely give them a better understanding of the world,” Paulson said. “It teaches them the professional language of diplomacy.”
In New York, students will write resolutions about current issues, exactly as the real United Nations does. The committees then get together as regions and convince others to sign their resolutions.
The resolutions will be sent to the UN with the possibility of enactment.
“You become very concerned and knowledgeable about the topics,” Paulson said.
In order to be eligible to attend the trip, the delegates must have attended the New York conference the previous year, or the Anaheim conference, and they must raise funds to participate in the conferences.
The cost of participating in the New York event is $1000. President Andrew K. Benton, the Lily Endowment, and the Inter Club Council subsidized part of the trip, but it usually takes months to raise the money for the trip.
11-02-2006