Tag: Model UN

Categories
News

Recap of the fourth annual Concordia Model UN

Delegates from all over the world visited Montreal for the CONMUN conference

The fourth edition of the Concordia Model United Nations (CONMUN) conference took place last week. The annual conference hosted by Concordia, was held this year at the hotel DoubleTree by Hilton. Representatives from delegations across the world  arrived in professional attire to compete in the event.

“Concordia has recently risen in the Model UN rankings, we’re fairly in the top 25 schools and our image is growing,” elaborated Rowen Tanguay, a Concordia staff member for Model UN. “More schools and better delegates are being attracted to our conference each year.” 

The aim of the conference is to simulate an United Nations conference as accurately as possible. During a simulation, delegates gather around tables to debate one another. The delegates raised a placard, on which the country or the person they represented was written. The Chair and the Vice Chair of the simulation will moderate the discussion. 

Danisha Decius, who is part of the Concordia secretary team for Model UN, explained that there are committees made up of general assemblies, specialized agencies, and crisis committees. 

CONMUN has been ranked as a Best Delegate conference since 2019.

“It is a great way to bring people not only from Canada, but also from the United States and abroad to see how great Concordia is and the city of Montreal,” said Liam Quraeshi, an assistant crisis director with Concordia’s Model UN team.

The main theme of this year’s conference was climate change, but conferences can focus on any subject that affects the international community, like artificial intelligence. 

Quraeshi said that in a typical CONMUN conference, 40 to 50 delegates represent countries or political actors. The countries selected tend to be the most influential like the U.S. and China. But sometimes, smaller countries like Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya are chosen depending on the debate theme of each conference.

Tanguay finds the Model UN environment fantastic. He thinks that the simulations are theatrical, but he loves them because he considers himself a theatrical person as well.

He is interested in politics. “Roleplaying as a political agent is a particularly appealing concept,” said Tanguay.

He appreciates how Model UN skills are applicable in everyday life. “I think it is a good program at the very least in terms of extracurricular activities,” he added. “It is a phenomenal activity for sharpening your social skills and forming lasting connections with incredible people.” 

Quraeshi said he particularly loves when the conference is held in Montreal because he prefers the experience here a lot more. 

“It is closer to where I live, I am very in touch with the city, in terms of best places to eat, the public transport, and just showing people around having a good time,”

he said.
Categories
News

Concordia’s External Delegation is gearing up for a new year fresh off their best one yet in 2020

The leaders of Concordia Model UN give a presentation at a training session. September 22 2021

Concordia breaks into the top 20 Model UN delegations for the first time

The CED ranked 19th among North American Model UN teams, a massive achievement, which puts them in the company of other elite universities such as Harvard, Yale, UCLA and McGill. For the CED, it is their highest ranking ever in the North American division, and first time breaking into the top 20. In the past two years, Concordia has finished in the top 25.

“So, it’s really like finally saying ‘okay Concordia as a delegation is on the map.”’ said Jonah Guez, a Concordia graduate and former CED president.

“It’s finally like the efforts have finally come to fruition, and people within Concordia absolutely believe in the fact that they can win now.”

The North American College Model UN rankings are based on how delegations perform at various conferences throughout the year, as well as how many awards their delegates and overall delegations receive. The higher the amount of conferences they attend, the more awards they can take home. The conferences are held across North America.

One of the toughest conferences is held at Harvard University, where Concordia student and current president of the CED Alexi Dubois placed third in his committee.

In Model UN competitions, competitors are referred to as delegates who take on the role of representing different countries in a mock UN General Assembly, UN Security Council or other UN bodies, to smaller competitions where the delegates act and debate as characters in a scenario, like a historical event or a board of directions. They take on the perspective of these countries and debate how to tackle global issues like climate change, trade, and other global affairs, or in presenting and debating their characters’ point of view in a smaller event. These committees like the UN General Assembly are often very large with up to 100 delegates involved.

“So, it can go anywhere from 193 countries, and a large room representing the United Nations General Assembly, to honestly 15 people talking about the October Crisis as their own characters — it’s a huge range of topics, but there’s a little bit of something for everyone,” said Dubois.

Dubois specializes in smaller committees, where delegates may portray the board members of a major company or different characters during historical events. At Harvard, he was a part of a historical committee, with the topic being that of the October Crisis in Quebec.

Dubois was tasked with portraying a feminist separatist journalist during the October Crisis, and his performance earned him third place in the committee, a major personal achievement for him.

“I’d gone to Harvard the year before in-person, and I’d come up short. I hadn’t won anything, but I kind of left feeling like ‘Oh, these are the differences I need to make to my performance to be able to do better,’” Dubois explained.

“​​It felt really amazing to hear your name called out at probably the toughest Model UN conference you can go to […] there’s a lot of work and preparation that goes in beforehand, and to actually then be able to translate all your research and all your work into a performance that’s recognized is a really great feeling.”

Model UN is built around public speaking, and interpersonal social skills. To win awards, it’s not always about who speaks the loudest, but who can get the most people on their side.

“Public speaking is something we know we can help you with. We know that even with a bit of nervousness, we can coach you through it and make you a really great public speaker. The best skill you can have to try out for the team that we’re looking for is really just those interpersonal skills and being able to have people listen to you,” Dubois said.

The CED’s best year ever comes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Model UN circuit thrives on in-person conferences and collaboration between universities, and was therefore greatly affected by the pandemic. Conferences took place almost entirely online, which made it difficult to get new students involved in the program.

There is still a lot of uncertainty moving forward for the CED regarding travel, and which conferences may be held in person or online, but it isn’t slowing Dubois or his team down.

“Our goal this year is to attend as many conferences as possible, and [focus] on what’s called delegation awards. So we’ve really tried to create a strategy which focuses on not necessarily individual awards but team awards,” Dubois explained. The teams that win the most awards in a conference win delegation awards.

“Those delegation awards really make the largest difference to climb up in the rankings. So if we’re around 19th at the moment, and if we want to crack the top 15, which would be a dream, it would be fantastic. We really need to start working on getting more delegation awards.”

One thing that makes the CED different and possibly so successful for the time they’ve existed is the culture around teamwork that they have developed.

“Chicago and Georgetown universities, who have huge Model UN programs, and they’re actually extremely competitive within themselves. So not only do you compete against other people at conferences, you actually first compete against people from your own school to be able to go to a conference, and that’s not really the way we approach things. At Concordia, we hold a tryout in October, and we have 30 to 40 people who make the team. From that point on, it’s everyone trying to help each other together,” described Dubois.

The CED will be hosting training sessions for new and interested students beginning Sept. 22 leading up to their in-house tryouts in October.

Photos by Catherine Reynolds

Categories
News

Concordia’s Model United Nations team ranks amongst top 25 worldwide

Concordia finished 24th according to recently released rankings

After a season of conferences across North America, it was recently announced that the Concordia Model UN team finished 24th in the World Division and second in Canada, behind only McGill.

During the year, Concordia attended six conferences before the season drew to an abrupt halt in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They brought home awards from each conference, in which hundreds of universities competed throughout the year.

Model United Nations is an activity where students from various universities gather together at a host school for a conference. Participants, known as delegates, are separated into a number of different committees, and each committee is given a topic to discuss. For example, one committee might be discussing waste management while another could be discussing atomic energy. The goal for the delegates is to create a bill with a list of recommendations which, if enacted, would address the topic of discussion. The most prominent delegates from each committee are awarded for their achievements.

This is the second year in a row that Concordia has placed in the top 25, and team president Jonah Guez could not be any prouder.

“Concordia is capable of competing with the top schools in North America,” said Guez. This may be one of the only competitions where Concordia can best Ivy League schools. The Concordia group finished five places behind Harvard and beat Princeton and Cornell in the final rankings.

“Every delegate plays a role in the success of the others and awards are won as a team,” said Guez. He attributed the team’s success to the hard work and dedication of their 30 plus members.

“Seeing my school amongst the best in the continent is simply awesome,” said team member Nikolas Manrique. He chose to attend Concordia because of their strong Model UN program and was thrilled to see this kind of success in his first year.

“Being a part of this group meant being part of a family,” said Jamie Fabian. This idea of family and teamwork was brought up time and time again by members of the group. They were all quick to attribute their success to the hard work of those around them.

“Striving to be better than the day before is a priority for the team,” said president Jonah Guez. With that aim in mind, he says they are already preparing for next year.

Ultimately, improvement comes in the form of climbing up the rankings. In Fabian’s mind, the team has one very clear goal for next year: crack the top 20 worldwide. For more information about Concordia’s Model UN, visit www.conmun.org.

Categories
News

Constitution issues stifle CONMUN fee levy application

Concordia’s model UN contested application rejection for fee levy
by Nathalie Laflamme and Gregory Todarro

On Wednesday, Oct. 8, it was discussed at a CSU meeting whether the application Concordia Model UN (CONMUN) submitted in order to apply for a fee levy could be accepted.

CONMUN had submitted their application on Sept. 12 after collecting 1,000 signatures from students. On Oct. 1, the CSU policy committee and CONMUN met in order to discuss the issues the policy committee had with their constitution. The committee explained that their issues with the document stemmed from ambiguities in the constitution, as well as a late submission of their request.

In the rebuttal CONMUN presented to CSU this week, they described the two-hour meeting with the policy committee as having had a “hostile” environment, and said their constitution had been unfairly “shredded” for seemingly minor issues.

“We felt that this decision of the policy committee to reject our application to hold a fee levy referendum based on our constitution was completely unjust,” Nathanaël Dagange, CONMUN president, said.

However, this was news to CSU VP academic and advocacy Terry Wilkings, who chairs policy committee meetings.

“I was very surprised to see the language in the rebuttal document in terms of the environment being hostile,” he said. “I honestly felt like the meeting was conducted with mutual respect and was a highly collegial affair.”

The reason the policy committee was so thorough with eliminating ambiguity from this particular constitution was to set precedent for future applications, according to Wilkings. He explained that the CSU is currently working to improve how the constitutions for future fee levy groups are set up.

“The ambiguity that currently exists is something the policy committee is making a priority to review, and we’d like to put in place a standard review process so all applications are being treated in the same manner year in, year out,” Wilkings said.

The other issue brought up by the policy committee was dealing with the date the application was submitted. According to Benjamin Prunty, CSU president, it has yet to be decided whether the notwithstanding clause will be used to exempt CONMUN from abiding by this limitation. However, he warned of the dangers of setting a “dangerous precedent.”

“If we accept applications outside of our regulations for no compelling reason beyond the fact that some of our members have shown a good deal of initiative, then we are communicating to everyone that that is all it takes, but that should not be the case.”

Prunty added that unlike other initiatives from the past, such as the Concordia Food Coalition, there is “no pressing matter needing to be attended to by CONMUN, among other differences between the two situations. If we don’t send their questions to ballot, they will continue to operate, presumably, as the well-funded CSU club in much the same way as they have in the past.”

The policy committee will announce on Oct. 17 whether the ambiguities of the CONMUN’s constitution have been successfully dealt with.

“We are still in the process of reviewing the application, but it is definitely possible that, if major inconsistencies can be addressed, that policy committee will change its previous recommendation,” Prunty said.

CONMUN had applied for a fee levy of seven cents per credit starting in the winter 2015 semester. If their application is approved by council, students will vote on whether or not CONMUN will be able to have this fee levy at the winter by-elections.

 

Exit mobile version