{"id":19728,"date":"2023-03-15T17:08:47","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T01:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=19728"},"modified":"2023-03-15T17:09:26","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T01:09:26","slug":"westerns-model-united-nations-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/westerns-model-united-nations-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Western’s Model United Nations Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by: Gretchen Sims<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, from Feb. 23 \u2014 Feb. 25, members of Western\u2019s Model United Nations club took part in a well-established academic tradition \u2014 the London International Model United Nations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Model UN is a popular activity for students interested in political science and allows participants to simulate the proceedings of an actual United Nations conference.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each participant is assigned a committee that replicates an actual committee in the UN. In that committee, the student represents a randomly assigned country \u2014 sometimes this can be a specific person, but this is quite rare.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once these committees are assigned, students are given a real-world topic and are tasked with accurately representing and bolstering their country\u2019s interests.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two Western MUN members were assigned to the United States on the Security Council. This was an interesting predicament for these students, as being assigned to the state from which you originate is rare and did not sit well with other participating schools.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While Western delegates did not win an award, members did exceptionally well. The delegates were working on energy security and the energy crisis, and went against the grain. While most focused on the energy pipelines and creating a singular energy grid, the U.S. Security Council felt ignored and decided to take action. mozambique, an elected member of the Security Council, was trying to start a resolution paper \u2014 one of three circulating the General Assembly \u2014 however, it kept getting looked over and shut down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was then that Russia decided to back mozambique\u2019s paper \u2014 a big deal due to the P5, one of the five permanent members on the security council, state\u2019s veto power.\u00a0 Sharon Mann and Max Laine decided to beat Russia at their own game and back mozambique\u2019s paper as well. This left the rest of the states in deep trouble because, with the backing of two P5 states, the previously overlooked resolution was protected by two veto powers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Immediately, the U.S. Security Council delegates were the center of attention \u2014 with everyone suddenly begging the U.S. to work with them. However, the U.S. used its veto power to its full capacity and shut everyone down in true American style.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, at the end of the day, this was a huge accomplishment for Western.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mann, one of the two students on the Security Council, said that \u201cAll the schools that went to this conference were big-name schools internationally. Universities from France, Spain, lots from London \u2014 I think there was a delegation from Oxford there\u2026 It was big! We were one of the only American schools \u2014 I think there was one other one from New Jersey \u2014 but we were Western Oregon. At this huge conference that thousands of people went to, and it wasn\u2019t like U of O going, or even Stanford.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":19729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[143],"class_list":["post-19728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-news"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}