Students Build Diplomatic Muscle At Model U.N.

The government of Rwanda should be envious.

The tiny African nation carries little clout on its own within the United Nations. But when a group from UC's Political Science Student Association assumed the role of Rwanda two weeks ago at the American Model United Nations International simulation in Chicago, they got superpower-sized results.

Only four resolutions were passed in the General Assembly Plenary session of 125 delegations.

Of those, two were co-authored by Rwanda/UC and one - a resolution on water supply and sanitation - was presented by the Rwanda/UC delegation and became the only resolution to pass by consensus without any opposing votes.

A very impressive showing, especially considering it was the first time UC students had attended the simulation in years. UC was able to send a group of 12, thanks in part to support from a new university fund dedicated to sending groups to student competitions.

"Overall, I thought our delegation did very well. We were more prepared than a lot of other delegations," said group member Cori Funk, who serves as the UC group's permanent representative to the U.N. simulation. "We had people come up afterwards and tell us how well we did, particularly for a first-time delegation."

Group adviser Howard Tolley, professor of political science, allowed that they had exceeded his expectations. The same could be said of how the participants felt about the simulation.

The four-day event was intensive and grueling in pace. Activities began at 8:30 a.m. and ran until 10 p.m., with little free time scheduled. Delegates were expected to dress and play their parts throughout.

"You had to be very specific. There was a real stress on acting in character," said Mike Hoff, president of the UC Political Science Student Association. "We knew we had to be prepared on our positions, but I don't think we knew how in-depth and specific it could get."

For example, Hoff was prepared to talk in committee meetings about the issue of Palestinian refugees, but ran into a roadblock when asked what the actual Rwandan position is towards the issue.

There were other interesting lessons in the fine points of diplomacy.

Hoff went into his committee with a resolution on the external debt crisis, but it never came before the committee. Instead, he spent the better part of three days trying to block a vote on another resolution.

Christina Mihalek was part of the committee that successfully authored and had passed in the Plenary session a resolution on the disintegration of states. "Consensus is difficult," she learned. "We had a fight with one delegation that wanted to change 'declares' to 'declares accordingly.' Every resolution gets picked apart word by word."

Barton Lanker helped author the successful resolution on water supply. "It seemed like a big accomplishment (when it was passed), but not in an individual sense," he said. "We looked on the web and could see there were 16 different countries trying to make something happen in this area, but they couldn't get the language right."

The group is planning on representing Russia in a regional exercise in Dayton in February, and returning to represent Columbia in next year's national event in Chicago. They are have also set a future goal of participating in a model UN event in New York that is held in the actual UN facility.