During the final weekend of October, Miami University's Model United Nations (UN) team traveled to Cleveland and took first place in the Lake Erie Model United Nations Conference (LEIMUN) to kick off their year.
According to a press release, the victory at the 17-school conference-which involved approximately 200 students over four days-marked the second consecutive year in which Miami has come out on top at LEIMUN. This year, however, Miami shared their first place honors with Case Western Reserve University.
For this first conference of the year, as seen in the press release, Miami sent the largest delegation to the committee, with 30 competitors. Of these 30 RedHawk delegates, only six or seven were returning, as about two thirds were brand new, according to Ian Rexroad, undersecretary of communications for the organization.
Rexroad credits the high turnover rate to students going abroad, but feels that this just shows the team's success since the team is still doing well-even without some of their experienced members.
"In my three years in the organization, not only did we get a lot of new recruits for the team, but their interests in the subjects that Model UN deals with is just exponential compared to the class I was admitted into," said Rexroad, a senior double majoring in foreign affairs and mass communication. "This year was just phenomenal for the first-years we got and part of that is Miami rising in stock."
While at LEIMUN, Miami also took home a handful of individual delegate awards, as 15 members of the RedHawk team received excellent delegate awards. Junior Alex Schoultheis, representing France in the Security Council, also received the rare "superior delegate" award for this work.
Senior Matt Scalf, one of the excellent delegate award recipients, saw the LEIMUN conference as a great victory that also could help for future improvements.
"It's kind of like our warm up conference, so we take a lot of new members to this one," said Scalf, a sociology and philosophy major representing China at LEIMUN. "I personally like this conference better because it's smaller. When I went to (University of Pennsylvania conference), I had a committee that was about 200 people, so it's pretty impossible to get called on unless you have a very important country. This also has smaller committees. It's more regional, as schools from Ohio, Indiana and New York participate, (where) the others are more national with the heavy hitters like Harvard and Yale."
Secretary General Jeffrey Bieszczak says that the organization is comprised of all years at Miami, although with most of the junior class is abroad, there were several first-timers.
One thing Bieszczak does note about this balance is that the retention rate for students returning from overseas is quite high, and that students come back drastically improved as delegates.
Bieszczak also noted that Model UN does more than just visit other schools for conferences.
"We do a lot more on campus," said Bieszczak, a sophomore diplomacy and foreign affairs and German double major. "We run a lecture series through the Havighurst Center, the (economics) department and the (geology) department to get professors that have interest in international affairs and current events so we can pull out the passions of teachers who might not normally get to voice their opinions on the world. We're really trying to make sure that Model UN is not only is an out of Miami organization."
Scalf also felt that part of the success had to do with the fact that the organization is entirely student run.
"Many other clubs are run by administrators or certain professors coaching them," Scalf said. "We have a faculty adviser but all they do each year is count positions. It's pretty much all student run and I think it has a lot to do with our success and it makes it a bit more fun."
