This article originally appeared in the Daily Bulletin, University of Waterloo
- January 26, 2006
A group of 25 students are heading for Montréal today to spend four days finding out what it’s like trying to bring peace and prosperity to the world.
They’re members of UW’s Model United Nations Club — WatMUN — and will be taking part in the McGill University Model UN Assembly, being held today through Sunday at a downtown hotel. In its 15th year, the McGill event is expected to attract about 1,400 participants.
Renjie Butalid, an economics student and president of WatMUN, says the Waterloo group “have been diligently preparing” for the past several months. “These students have shown a keen interest in some of the issues affecting the world today.”
During reading week, another 18 students will be representing the university at the Harvard University National Model UN Conference in Boston. Butalid will lead the delegation to Harvard, while the UW group going to McGill will be led by WatMUN vice-president Marco Di Lorenzo, a political science student.
“During both conferences,” Butalid writes, “the students will be subjected to a simulation of the United Nations General Assembly, Security Council and other UN bodies. Each student has been assigned a country to represent and topics to research. It is the task of the student to represent his/her country’s foreign policy for that particular topic. Delegates engage in topics ranging from political corruption to counter-terrorism to nuclear medicine. Hundreds of students from some of the most reputable schools in the world will be in attendance. The tense level of competition is sure to produce some sobering debates,” as well as “a rewarding experience in public speaking, negotiating and cooperation, and social networking”.
The Waterloo delegates come from various faculties “and are by no means limited to political science or economics majors, as it would seem. Students from environmental and health science to software engineering have also taken interest in the conferences.”
Butalid gave credit for “most generous financial support” from UW and the political science department, the Federation of Students, and the nearby Centre for International Governance Innovation.
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