After an aggressive publicity campaign, the Model United Nations Society at Elon University has seen a recent increase in membership and prominence on campus.
Elon University senior Andrew Black, the organization’s president, said he began working to increase student participation shortly after his election in the spring. MUN now has 105 people, more than three times its size from 2008.
Black said he has also seen growth in participation in MUN-sponsored events on Elon’s campus. Each year, the organization hosts a Global Simulation, conducting a mock United Nations Security Council meeting with students from Global Experience classes.
“(MUN) will pick the issue, based off of real resolutions of the day and then give them the tools to debate,” Black said.
In past years, the event involved the participation of about three classes. Five classes will participate this fall in the Nov. 21-22 Global Simulation, allowing MUN staff to conduct not one, but three Security Council sessions at once.
Black said that as a result, staff will be able to reach more students and with a greater diversity of subject matter. MUN also hosts the International Crises Conference at Elon with the participation of students studying international relations.
“We focus on a region, we will have people from Model UN chairing committees and International Relations classes are the delegates,” Black said. “All committees are linked by a central hub crisis center.”
Elon senior Catie Serex, who leads the International Crises Conference at Elon, has a goal of simulating the political crises of South and Central Asia in the most realistic way possible.
Speakers from the Department of State and Department of Defense will also discuss the consequences of decision-making with first-year International Relations students at the conference.
“Usually, we hold this is Koury Business Center,” he said. “Because of our growth, it’s impossible at this point. We’ve taken over the Academic Pavilion and reserved it for three nights for the crisis simulation.”
Serex said organizing the event requires a large amount of human capital. With the increase in membership, it has made her job much easier.
Serex said that MUN is also looking into turning ICCE into an intercollegiate conference where other universities bring their MUN teams to Elon and compete. Elon’s MUN team travels regularly to institutions such as Duke University and Princeton University to compete in similar conferences.
“We feel we have a good foundation to put on a conference,” Serex said. “It would not only bring publicity, but also show people the academic quality of Elon’s campus.”
Black emphasized that MUN is a student-run organization, with all events planned by them. He noted that Serex, vice president Brooke Kassner, and professor Chalmers Brumbaugh, adviser to MUN, are instrumental in ensuring that the club’s objectives are met.
Black said Model UN gives students the tools to study international relations and politics that course work cannot.
“MUN is not just about passively digesting information, (it’s) about taking what you know, researching more on your own and experiencing International Relations as opposed to studying it,” he said. “This epitomizes the Elon idea of engaged learning.”
– Written by Caitlin O’Donnell ‘13