From First-Year Studies to capstone projects, Lawrentians are constantly engaged in an environment demanding collaborative, critical and innovative thinking. In this way, the liberal arts setting could be considered a microcosm of international interaction, with actors attempting to understand and coordinate numerous coexisting perspectives as they come into contact for the betterment of the global condition. Lawrence University Model United Nations (UN) President, senior Bruna Velez, hinted at this comparison as she talked about the similarity between the skills necessary for cooperation in spaces as small as the classrooms we see on a daily basis to those as large as our world’s most prestigious intergovernmental organization.
Velez started her time at Lawrence as a government major, pursuing her interest in politics and how it shapes our everyday lives.
Quickly, however, she found this interest on a larger scale when she took Introduction to International Relations (IR), recounting that she fell in love with the discipline hard and fast. That year was also the year that Lawrence piloted the IR major, so, determined to pursue her newfound passion, Velez made the switch to the newly offered area of study in an official capacity.
Through her classes, Velez met and quickly clicked with the then-president of Model UN, Paola Saldana ‘24. From one person with a passion for IR to another, Saldana urged Velez to check out Model UN as a student organization dedicated to their beloved discipline. Intrigued, Velez became involved with the organization, and by her junior year, found herself representing Sudan at a Model UN conference in New York City. Outside of the conference itself, Velez held a soft spot for the organization’s trip to New York City since they got to visit the UN headquarters, sit in the General Assembly room and explore the mission statements of the country they represented in their actual environment.
“It’s really fun to be in a space where there are people that have similar interests to you,” Velez recollected on her first conference. “I was having really intellectually stimulating conversations with people from all over the world; [with] more than half of the participants in these conferences [being] from outside of the U.S., you get a lot of different perspectives on a lot of different issues.”
Model UN attends two competitive conferences like this year, one in New York City and one in Washington, D.C. Each year, Lawrence’s chapter of the organization is assigned a country to represent in mock assembly meetings alongside other ‘countries.’ To accurately simulate the meetings’ dynamics, the organization engages in research on their country — in this year’s case, Morocco — for nuanced representations of that country’s positions, values and politics. From each country, ‘delegates’ are placed on UN committees and speak on two different topics. The delegates work together to produce a position paper detailing where their country stands on an issue based on what stances it has taken in the past, what resolutions it has passed and its national commitments, to name a few.
Velez gave an example of this in practice this year; our university’s two delegates on the Human Rights Committee spoke on the importance to Morocco of safeguarding women and children in armed conflicts and worked with other committee delegates to agree upon a resolution that best met the needs of its member countries. From there, Lawrentian delegates eventually proposed a committee-wide resolution to be voted on by the assembly, with hopes of seeing it passed.
“The goal for the conference is global diplomacy, so you work with all these other countries to create living proof of collaboration […] on a topic and how to better the world in general,” Velez said. “The resolution is a showcase of […] [international] community.”
To Velez’s pleasant surprise, this year was the first year of over-interest in the organization to be one of 10 delegates representing Morocco in Washington, D.C. The conference went very well; Velez proudly recounted that Lawrence’s chapter even won awards on their position paper and for “honorable delegation.”
While in Washington, D.C., Model UN visited the Moroccan Embassy, where they met with both delegates and the country’s ambassador to the U.S. over tea and pastries from the country. Velez emphasized how fortunate she was to be able to discuss the issues of their committees with people whose livelihoods are dedicated to representing Morocco on a global scale, pointing to gaining new perspectives through them as a highlight of the visit.
Though Velez believes the club to be especially important to government and IR majors, she stressed that it is not reserved for them. On the contrary, she described it as a place where Lawrentians of any academic background can learn about our world’s deeply interconnected and complex perspectives while refining skills vital both to and beyond a liberal arts environment, like research, writing and public speaking.
“As global citizens, it’s our duty to understand what’s going on in the world,” Velez declared. “The whole point of Model UN is [to step] out of who you are and your applicable beliefs […] in a very […] diplomatic way.”
Velez encouraged Lawrentians interested in Model UN to reach out to her for more details.