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Model UN scores big

Tennessee Tech students from the Model United Nations Team traveled to St. Louis, Mo. for the 54th Midwest Model United Nations Conference in February.

Model United Nations is a simulation of the actual United Nations. Teams of college students travel to these conferences and take on identities of countries. Delegates from each country meet in different committees to propose ideas, then discuss and debate topics on current international issues. Delegates then write resolutions and present them to a Model UN General Assembly. The resolution is further debated before the assembly votes on resolutions.

Tech proudly stood out at the MMUN conference, representing the United States of America. Students worked for months on their topic before traveling to St. Louis, then worked with other delegates for at least 15 hours a day.

Tech’s MUN teams brought three awards home: Honorable mention, Outstanding Delegate, and Outstanding Paper Award.

Instructor of MUN, Dr. Jennifer Anderson, said, “MMUN is a competitive conference with about 40 universities and 500 students vying for a limited number of awards, and it was only our second time as participants.”

Tech placed fifth out of 40 other schools that attended the MMUN conference.

Rhendi Mitchell won the Honorable Mention Award her first time in MUN for her work in the World Food Programme Committee. In this committee, delegates worked to come up with a potential solution for the issue of Global Food Security and the issue of malnutrition throughout the world.

 “It was a great learning experience,” Mitchell said. “Not only did I get to learn how to work better with people who have different views on how to do things, but I also learned how the United Nations works.”

Andrew Jefferies, president of MUN, won the Outstanding Delegate Award and Outstanding Paper Award for his work in the Security Council. The Security Council does its job by promoting world peace and security. This committee tackled the topics of North Korea, terrorism, and nuclear weapons.

“Our biggest achievement was global nuclear disarmament, which was secured in the end of the conference,” said Jefferies. “Overall, we were told by the president of the Security Council that we were the first Security Council to pass substantive resolutions on all three topics and a crisis.”

Anderson said, “I’m excited to continue to build our team through experiences like MUN. We hope to compete at a national conference sometime during the next academic year.”