Tufts Model UN seeks continued growth

                Last weekend, the Tufts Model United Nations (MUN) team competed in the Five College Model United Nations Conference (FCMUN) hosted by Mount Holyoke College to mark the team's fourth and final conference of the year.
    MUN social chair Leonard Wachs explained that this conference was the group's most successful to date.
    "This was our best showing yet at any conference we have attended in the past four years," Wachs, a sophomore, told the Daily in an email. "We brought 24 members, the largest delegation we have taken to a conference, and we received seven awards, including two Best Delegates. Compared to last year, our delegation at this specific conference more than doubled in size - that goes for our club in general, as well - received more awards and had an overall bigger impact at the conference."
    Tufts delegates Jenna Smith and Michael Bird received the Best Delegate awards, while Vice President Annirudh Balachandran and Wachs earned Honorable Mentions. Tufts MUN team President Ashley Scarfo received a Verbal Commendation recognition.
    According to Scarfo, a senior, the conference consisted of series of crisis committees that test delegate's abilities to make quick decisions during imaginary crisis scenarios. The types of committees ranged from realistic scenarios, such as the Ninth East Asian Summit, to imaginary situations, like the World War Z Committee, in which delegates were forced to make decisions in the face of the outbreak of an imaginary virus.
    Scarfo explained that MUN conferences, like last weekend's, offer opportunities to develop practical skills that are applicable to a variety of majors.
    "Doing MUN, you definitely develop public speaking experience, debate skills and thinking on your feet that you cannot get anywhere else," Scarfo said. "Being able to confidently talk in front of hundreds of people is a great skill to have, and I think it can be useful for any Tufts student of any major. Most think that Model UN is for [international relations] nerds, but we have biomedical engineers to music majors who benefit just as much."
    Balachandran added that MUN has a great community.
    "It really comes down to the people you have with you," Balachandran, a junior said. "It's the people at Tufts Model UN, the e-board to the underclassmen [to] the seniors who have graduated, who make it all the worthwhile and entertaining. They gave me the confidence to go out there and to do well, and you just learn so much from others in the club. Our club is full of people who are knowledgeable in international aspects, and, as an international student myself, it's nice to have a shared community."
    According to Scarfo and Wachs, the club meets each week to practice technical skills such as speaking, researching and writing resolutions. Wachs added that the group holds mock committee sessions each semester to prepare for the conferences.
    Although the season is over, the MUN club is already planning for next year, Scarfo explained. The team is also hoping to hold its own MUN conference for local high schools as a way to build relations and teach prospective MUN delegates.
    "We've been contacted by local high schools whose students want to grow their own high school MUN teams," Scarfo said. "We are trying to develop relations with the neighborhood, and we thought a great way to develop that was to host our own MUN conference for them. We don't know how far we can extend in the first year, but we are going to try out best to simulate what these high school delegates will encounter at the college level."
    Wachs added that hosting a conference will put Tufts in a special group.
    "We're also really proud of the fact that next year we will be hosting Tufts' first ever high school conference," he said. "This will really put Tufts and Tufts MUN into a select group of schools."
    While Tufts MUN is a Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate-recognized group with funding and had its largest-ever team this year, Balachandran added that in the past, costs have been prohibitive to some students.
    "The last thing we want to see is a student not being able to go to these conferences," Balachandran said. "Yet, I've met students who couldn't afford it."
    However, with the Senate's recent development of a new funding program for students on financial aid, Balachandran and Wachs hope even more students will be able to participate in the future.
    "We are very excited about the new student fund that TCU [Senate] has passed, which should allow us to put less of a financial requirement on students wanting to attend our conference[s]," Wachs said. "This will allow us to better pursue our club's ultimate goal: to allow undergraduates in the Tufts community the opportunity to learn about the bodies, functions and methods of the UN and other organizations. More money means more people can learn."
    In addition to this learning, Balachandran explained that participating in MUN has also helped him to develop both a sense of school pride and citizenship.
    "You learn about active citizenship and what it means to be a global citizen, and it really helped my entryway to the Tufts community," he said. "Model UN opened me up to the community, and I was able to meet more people and became more confident [in] being a Tufts student. By being in MUN, I get a very strong Tufts pride."