Model UN kicks off at Emerson College

10/25/09Each February, about 3,000 students from universities around the country and around the world gather in Boston to participate in the four-day Harvard National Model United Nations Conference or HNMUN. In 2010, Emerson College hopes for the first time to be among them.

About a dozen interested students took the initiative at the urging of Dr. Richard West, chair of the Department of Communication Studies, said the organization's new co-president, sophomore Political Communications major Daniel Tick.

"There aren't really any Emerson College organizations that focus on international affairs or have a strong international scope," said Tick. "Model UN offers that and the capacity in which [this program] offers that allows students to participate in the way real foreign relations conduct their affairs."

HNMUN is the longest running college-level Model UN conference in the world and one of the largest in the United States. It is devoted to an experiential education through debate, diplomacy and compromise.

April Qian, the student-elected Secretary-General of HNMUN 2010, said the Model UN enables students to develop expert skill in writing, research, public speaking and the art of negotiation as students argue for the interests of the countries they represent on every imaginable topic relevant in today's global community.

Tick said he thought the experience would be fun. "It's like a really intense, complex game," he said.

Political Communications sophomore Amelia Ashmall-Liversidge said, "I figured I would learn more about the world and how diplomacy works with different nations around the world."

Emerson's team will go by the acronym ECMUN.

Conferences such as HNMUN are modeled after the actual United Nations and represent the same countries and committees those countries take part in. Depending on the country each school's delegation is assigned, students must play the country's role on committees such as The General Assembly, the Security Council, the Human Rights Council, and the World Health Organization and argue from the point of view of their assigned governmental society.

Additional committees can be created as needed such as crisis committees, which occur when a conference presents active new updates on issues and students have to resolve them along the way.

"It's not like a sport with defined rules," said Tick. "It's much more open-ended than that."

As a newfound student group, ECMUN is in the process of gaining official campus recognition by the Student Government Association (SGA) and seeking $5,000 in funds. Prof. Michael Weiler will serve as its advisor.

Tick and Tau Zaman, a freshman Political Communications major and the ECMUN training/coaching chair, said all of the members are working together as a team to make Model UN at Emerson into a reality.

In addition to the approval process, the group's biggest challenge has been trying to find a meeting time convenient for everyone, said Zaman.

Tick said the team needs support and funding from SGA by Nov. 11 to hit the application deadline for the HNMUN conference in February. The fee is $60 per delegate, $50 per advisor, and $60 per participating country.