Members of Brown Model United Nations will travel to Geneva, Switzerland, tomorrow to participate in the annual World Model United Nations Conference hosted by Harvard University and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.
At conferences, students assume the roles of foreign diplomats and participate in simulated sessions of intergovernmental organizations such as the Economic and Social Council or the Executive Committee of UNICEF. Twelve Brown students will attend this year's WorldMUN, where 1,500 students from over 35 countries will meet to debate topics from their assigned country's perspective.
Teams are often given one country to represent, but this year Brown will represent a number of smaller countries, including Cuba and the Gambia. The team has spent this week busily researching these countries' perspectives on the issues to be discussed in Geneva.
"It's like a simulation of the United Nations - the students are divided into different committees, and each committee has topics chosen ahead of time that you have to research, and then you try and create resolutions to deal with those issues," said Brown MUN President Geoffrey D'Cruz '07. These issues include historical situations or current global social problems such as human trafficking or global warming.
The Brown MUN members attend three conferences each year at Harvard, Yale and McGill universities in addition to the world conference. "We run a laid-back version of it compared to other schools," said Ingrid O'Brien '07, the group's vice president of internal affairs.
"For us it's more of a social thing as well as a chance to travel and, you know, talk about really interesting topics with other people - but not something to stress about," O'Brien said. Unlike many other teams, Brown sends freshmen and students without previous MUN experiences to conferences.
"Because of that we tend to get countries like ... Fiji and Equatorial Guinea. We don't get the hardcore countries," O'Brien said.
Rather than experience, enthusiasm and involvement are the criteria for team members' selection. "It's a really strong team, and we always choose people to go who are always very involved in the club," D'Cruz said. "It's sort of a reward for them to go on this international trip."
In addition to attending conferences, Brown MUN hosts an annual conference on campus for high school students. Last year's conference saw the participation of 650 students "running around in suits and nice clothes on a weekend," D'Cruz said.
The funds generated from the high school conference are used to subsidize Brown MUN's trip to the WorldMUN and a short vacation during spring break.
"We always take a side trip after the conference because the conference runs like four days, and then we use our last weekend to go someplace else," O'Brien said. This year, after Geneva, the Brown MUN team will take a trip to Barcelona and return to Providence April 1.
The team members have to balance their MUN research with midterms but are looking forward to their upcoming trip.
"It should be a really fun trip. Geneva is supposed to be an amazing city, and it's going to be exciting to be in a place that is known for all these diplomatic things and is one of the world centers," D'Cruz said.
