Political science senior Trenton Basner and political science sophomore Ethan Rose both won an awards at the recent Model United Nations (UN) conference.
“Ethan and I won the award for Best Delegate in the Security Council representing the Delegation of the UK,” Basner said.
Basner has been a part of the Model UN for the last two years while this was Rose’s first year participating. Basner won an award last year as well, the Best delegate on the UNESCO committee representing the country of France.
Basner described what the Model UN is and what the class prepares them for.
“Model [UN] is an organization where you participate in simulating the United Nations General Assembly and other multilateral bodies,” he said. “In doing so, students act as delegates or ambassadors for a selected nation and engage in speeches, prepare draft resolutions, negotiate with allies and adversaries, resolve conflicts based on the real political world.”
The conference has different schools who represent different delegations of Nations who are a part of the real UN. The members sit on committees and engage in scenarios that are provided by the American Model UN staff. Rose explained what this looked like and the highpoint of the Security Council which took place early in the morning.
“We spend about three days in a room with other delegations from around the country and work to create resolutions that solve issues facing the world,” he said. “Specifically on the Security Council, which me and Trenton were on, we had to come to an ‘emergency meeting’, which simulated a worldwide emergency that the Security Council had to solve in five hours. The five hours we had was between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.”
Associate professor of political science Stewart French talked about what students do to prepare for the conference.
“All semester students spend time giving in class speeches, simulating conference situations by using the rules for debate, writing resolutions, caucusing, building a research binder on their country and the two topics of the committee,” he said.
The team, as a whole also, performed well.
“The team did very well,” he said. “During the semester I watched students to see where their comfort zone and push them to take on the tasks they are avoiding,” he said. “Usually, public speaking is at the top of that list. We had a very strong team in people who wanted to speak, which is a big plus in the conference.”
French gave advice for students looking to join.
“Students should use the opportunity they have to participate in experimental learning at SVSU,” he said. “Our department has three classes devoted to giving students the opportunity to put experiences on their future resume that will be of value to any potential after SVSU word they are aiming for.”
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