Club awarded during state competition
Zee Hussaini and Elsa Denis, members of MUN. Hussaini won during the debates in Davis.
February 7, 2017
Model United Nations’ won two awards during a debate competition hosted by UC Davis this weekend.
Since 2009, the MUN club replicates the United Nations fostering debate and form resolutions to world issues through diplomacy.
During weekly meetings a topic is chosen and members try to solve the issue given.
Each member has a different position, representing a country in the conflict for example, and argue in order to defend it.
“I am more confident now, I was afraid at the beginning but you just have to pluck up your courage and be confident,” said Elsa Denis, MUN’s member for a year and president of the History club.
But these meetings are just preparation for DVC MUN to prepare each other to debate other schools, averaging four meetings per semester.
Since 2014, DVC won 18 awards and seems to continue down that path this semester.
This weekend, most of the members were in UC Davis to compete against the schools in California such as UC Berkeley, UCLA or UC San Diego.
“I made connections during conferences with people form a lot of other schools,” said Zee Hussaini, member for a year and a half and winner of one of the awards.
“You have to use a particular language during the debates, there is a political way of answering and MUN gives you the tools to do so,” he said.
The participants were divided in five committees and all have to deal with hypothetical, but realistic, situations that countries could have to face.
Topics are known before the competition and each participant must be prepared in advance.
MUN’s President Aaron Tarajos won an award competing in the committee facing a theoretical cold war in US becoming nuclear.
More than a club, all the members agreed on the fact that you get more because “you join a community, a group of friends, this club provides a sense of community and diversifies your transcript, and schools like to see that you have been a part of it. Joining this club helped me improve my public speaking and my creative side, and it is a way to express myself,” Tarajos said.
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