Taking home three awards this year, Milligan’s Model United Nations team had a very successful weekend. The team consisted of seniors Clementine Cousin, Sue Harrod and Emma Warax, and juniors Julie Deakins, Reagan Jeffers, Somang Lee, Tessa Stevenson, Kenzie Trujillo and Kennedy Weber. It was led by Dr. Amy Edmonds, assistant professor of political science.
Model UN is a collegiate version of the actual UN.
Students are broken into committees, where they represent a country and have to work through different problems as their country would do. The committees at the conference are department of development, department of human rights and humanitarian affairs, department of peace and security, ECOSOC and general assembly.
One of the awards given to Milligan’s team this year was “Outstanding Position Paper.” Students have to write an essay detailing their country’s policies on the topics being discussed in their committee. Lee helped Milligan’s team receive this award with a perfect score on her position paper. She was on the security council, which is a council in the department of peace and security.
“I basically spent the entire afternoon at Dos Gatos; I didn’t even know that that was possible,” Lee responded when asked how she got her perfect score. “I looked at the examples of best position papers on their website, and I tried to follow their format, and Dr. E really helped breaking it down for us. Everyone got at least an 80; you get an average of all the scores.”
The “Most Improved” award was given to Deakins and Jeffers. They were on the ECOSOC committee, which was one of the larger committees at close to 50 people. There were only four awards given out in this category, so this was a big accomplishment for Deakins and Jeffers.
The third award was a group award, the “Honorable Delegation” award. It recognized Milligan as being a good delegation.
Milligan sent an entire team of women this year, which has not always been the case. When asked if they felt that because of their gender they were looked down upon, both Lee and Deakins said they did not feel discriminated against.
“The atmosphere there is not sexist, at least for the group I was in,” Deakins replied when asked if there were any problems. “I did not feel that my opinion was seen as less than because I was a woman.”
In response to who should participate in Model UN, Lee replied, “If they like to debate and if they ever wonder about why the world is this way, why there are so many conflicts going on and why sometimes countries just can’t cooperate, I think they should do it. And if they’re ever curious about the ways we could do better in the community and the world–things like sustainable agriculture–they should join.”
She went on to talk about how students debate real life topics that are currently impacting the world: “We were debating about Syria, and it was also getting debated in real life. Model UN broadens your understanding of perspectives and understanding of an issue.”
Lee assured that you do not have to be a political science major to participate. Students who are interested can email Edmonds for more information.