Honorable Chairs, Distinguish Delegates
Wartburg Model United Nations (WMUN) finally took place after six week of preparation from the exec team, countless meeting, awesome delegates and big help from Dr. Billet and Dr. Thomas. Thank you all for making this possible and I hope that everyone enjoyed as much as I did.
But what now? I would like to open a discussion and hear what you guys think about MUN? Do you think the experience was worthy and suggest to others to be involved in MUN? Can you relate what we did in MUN with class experience? Did you learn anything out of this three days experience? How can we keep the conversation and discussion going? Do you think that a class like Capstone for Political Science and International Relations should have MUN included as their class project in the future? I guess this is more a post session comments, reflection. What do you think can be improved? How can we keep WMUN alive on campus?
…I yield my time to the chair and the rest of delegates: d
Delegation of France
In my view, anything that serves to engage college students in the "real world of politics" is a worthy endeavor. Also, it is my view that when students have a hand in designing their own activities, the pay-offs are deeper and wider educationally. For these reasons, I believe Liza Gashi and the others who devoted immense time and energy to the Wartburg MUN deserve all capstone members' commendations. They certainly have mine. As for building a model UN experience into the Capstone as an annual endeavor, I'm skeptical about the wisdom of that. It may be preferable to Ricci, but to otherwise mandate a portion of the class-geneated course foci, thus depriving future capstones of the opportunity for "other Liza's" to emerge is not likely to be as productive in my opinion. But I do believe this particular experience did have its benefits for those who took their assignments seriously. Though the Gen Assembly failed to pass a resolution on the Syrian crisis, it was clear that most of the delegates had done the necessary research to accurately represent their state delegations.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of disappointed that none of the work we put into the project yielded anything. It must be that much more frustrating for the exec team that did so much. I understand that we were limited in time and experience, but it still kind of sucks overall. Also, I think that some people just took things a little too seriously. It got pretty intense sometimes to the point where it was uncomfortable for other people. This was supposed to be a fun activity that wasn't really that fun for some people. But, at least now we have the experience and the next time a session occurs (if another session occurs while I am still here), I will be excited to participate.
ReplyDeleteI truly hope that MUN succeeds on campus. It is a worthy experience for any student from any major. Unfortunately, as with many things, students really have to be drug into the room to participate wholeheartedly. So perhaps, next year, it could be part of RICE Day (if such a day exists) and certainly as part of a few classes. Once a base of two years of students is established, I truly hope that there would be enough interest for it to stand independently and have enough interest to reach a critical mass. It is a worthy cause and political science students especially should take interest in its success because it is a required part of many political science or government programs at the best and many universities and colleges in the nation.
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