Model U.N. teaches global awareness

By Joy Nalywaiko

Jim Barringer, an Anderson University senior, has gained an appreciation for international politics. As a participant in the university’s Model United Nations program, he’s defended the interests of Spain, Portugal, China, Israel, and Croatia, and he does it so well that he’s even won awards. But all Barringer hopes to gain from the experience is global awareness.

“Like it or not, the U.N. has really brought the world closer together and interconnected nations in a way that’s really impossible for any one country to completely extricate itself from the rest of the international community,” says Barringer. “Understanding who it is we share the world with, what their cultures and beliefs and values are, and where all those things come from is a crucial part of understanding what goes on in the world.”

Anderson University has been involved in the Model UN program since the 1940s, staging its first conference in Byrum Hall April 25-26, 1947. Dr. Doug Nelson has headed Model U.N. on the AU campus since 1976. The program shows students of all majors how the U.N. debates and reaches resolutions while dealing with viewpoints of different countries. According to Nelson, the purpose of the program is “to achieve peace and major solutions” through mock U.N. meetings.

Dr. David Murphy, assistant faculty moderator, says the program is intended for students to receive a better grasp of how international politics work. Each year, the AU students participate in two major events — one in Indianapolis and the other at the Harvard National Model U.N. Conference in Boston. Barringer, a social-studies education major, has participated in the program for the past two years. He received awards during the 2004-05 year at both conferences, and received an “outstanding delegate award” at the Harvard conference. More than 150 schools from around the world attend the Harvard conference, and with more than 2,000 students competing each year, “it is a huge honor to win the award,” says Nelson.

Preparation for each event is no small undertaking. Barringer explains, “We are assigned a country to represent and we have to research that country’s view on various international issues such as human rights and counter-terrorism, about children in armed conflict, and other issues like what to do about Israel and Palestine and what to do about Iraq.” To prepare, he researches for two to three months prior to a conference, which involves weekly meetings and reading the news every day.

“I tend to place as much emphasis on learning about history and the culture of the people in question as much as I do about their country’s specific international positions,” he says.

This year Barringer was also the co-head delegate for the program with Renee Ramsey, a junior political science major. As a team, they coordinated the campus Model U.N. meetings and kept everyone apprised of information needed to prepare for the conferences.

The conference at Boston attracts elite schools from the United States, such as Yale and Harvard, and international schools from places such as Montreal and Chile.

“I was very intimidated at first,” admits Ramsey, “but then I looked at it like being in a theatre production. I am portraying a diplomat and representing the views of the diplomat’s country. The only difference is I make the script based on positions given by that country’s government.”

As a faculty moderator, Murphy interviews students to select for each delegation. He also spends time with them in groups as well as individually to help them research their country and learn how to represent it. “[The program] has demonstrated for me the value of the intellectual diversity of the liberal arts model of higher education,” Murphy says. “I have been able to see in practice how students from different areas draw both on their shared course experience and on the insights specific to their disciplines to prepare for this program.”

Barringer will take with him the knowledge he has gained through this program and use it in his career as a teacher. “It has definitely given me a greater clarity about how the U.N. works,” he says. “It has given me appreciation for, on the one hand, how much easier it is to fix a problem if everyone works together, but on the other hand, how difficult it is to get everyone to work together.”