As the auditorium fell quiet at the Florida Model United Nations conference last month a full auditorium of students sat on the edge of their seats, hoping to hear their school’s name. A voice on the stage called out:
“...and the last, and final, outstanding delegation award goes to the University of South Florida!”
Yes, the USF Model United Nations team founded only about a year ago had just won highest honors at a statewide conference in addition to a distinguished delegation award and an in-committee outstanding delegation award. So what did that mean? It brought a great deal of recognition to USF and got the attention of a lot of schools attending the conference such as FSU, UCF, UF, and several out-of-state schools.
Still, after such a pivotal moment in the group’s history, many USF students haven’t heard of the club or don't even know what Model United Nations itself is. Model United Nations, or MUN for short, is a group of students participating in United Nations conference simulations where foreign policy and international affairs are the main focus. Members of the club work for months at a time to prepare to represent their assigned countries in upcoming conferences by compiling research, learning public speaking skills, and perfecting the rhetoric necessary for the conference itself. These major conferences can be held in the same city or state, but are also held nationally and internationally.
The USF MUN club itself was founded just a year ago by music major and pre-law student Amy Currotto and co-founder and international studies major Jordon Liggett, but it didn’t just come up out of nowhere.
“In the beginning,” Liggett said, “we had to overcome a lot of struggles. There weren't a lot of us and a lot of people believed that the club would just fizzle out. But it's great to see that we did so well at conference and now we are branching out even more.”
Currotto, past president and founder, added, “The thing about Model UN is that it is one club that could essentially be two or three clubs. You have things like weekly meetings and advertising at Bull Markets in addition to planning these massive conferences and, on top of that, picking and selecting members for a traveling team.”
However, thanks to the founding leaders’ and members’ hard work and leadership, the club has evolved into a group of 15 ambitious members (including myself) who meet weekly to discuss international affairs and prepare for upcoming conferences.
This also means preparing to host conferences. Just this past month the team hosted the Bulls Model United Nations where several schools from around the area participated in a conference that we facilitated in the Marshall Student Center. We served as the chairs of several committees for about 200 middle and high school student delegates. The conference was a huge success and was not only good practice for our team and beneficial for building leadership skills, but also helped to educate the participating children about international relations and Model UN, as well.
That’s exactly what the newly elected MUN president Samuel Armes hopes to do. Armes, an international business and economics double major, has big aspirations for the future of this club. “What I want to do is get everyone I can to enjoy the experience,” he said. “I want to educate younger kids about it because my grade school didn’t have this club, so I didn’t get to really discover my love for international relations until I was much older. But what I want for our members is to get connections, have job opportunities that come from this club, and meet people through Model UN who will help them further in their lives. I want them to reach out to other people on campus and get involved with other international groups because our members represent so many different backgrounds and have so many different, yet informed, opinions and I want people to get to know us better.”
This is one of the great things about Model UN. We are truly a very diverse club with members from a variety of races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds and we hope to become larger and more inclusive so as to reach out to the rest of the community at USF and beyond. Because, really, the club has made a difference in so many members' lives.
One member, Francesca Rivera, says, “MUN has given me the platform to challenge both my mental and social skills. This, in turn, has taught me to pursue what I want in life and find what I can change in the world.”
Another member, Tyler Caley, says, “Model UN really cemented in my mind what I want to do with my life in studying international politics and foreign relations. If it wasn't for Model UN I probably wouldn't be majoring in International Studies. Also, I’ve met a lot of my best friends through Model UN.”
For me, personally, the club has taught me not only a lot about relationships between nations and diplomacy, but a lot about teamwork and how to respect other ideas. Currently we are trying to attend the national conference in New York in the spring time and I have never seen a group come together so readily or with such dedication to fund-raise for and educate people about our cause. You may or may not have heard us outside of the library yelling at you to buy cupcakes from our bake sale last week. I was so happy to see the constant flow of members coming to help out the entire time without being instructed to do so.
In this way our team is truly one that takes initiative. The members are responsible, intelligent, globally conscious, and always ready to reach out to the community.
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