KPU Model UN Club is the only Canadian team to win award at D.C. conference
The win puts them in the top 20 per cent of participating clubs
KPU's Model United Nations club members pictured right to left: Lorne Putman, Bobby Gardner, Aryan Kalia, Vadym Muraviov, and Adam Ali Khan.
Editor’s note: Lorne Putman, who was interviewed for this article, is a contributor for The Runner. The Runner acknowledges and has taken steps to prevent conflicts of interest or potential bias from influencing the article.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Model United Nations (MUN) Club was the only Canadian team to win an award at a conference in the United States capital, which ran from Nov. 10 to 12.
The club won an Honourable Mention Delegation Award at the National MUN in Washington, D.C., an annual conference that began in 2007.
The award, which the team received for representing the United Kingdom, places KPU in the top 20 per cent of teams who attended the conference, the club says.
“To me, it shows the personal achievement of the members of our team,” says Bobby Gardner, president of the KPU MUN Club.
Out of the eight people in the club, Gardner says five members had never participated in a university-level Model UN conference outside of a mock one that was held at KPU in March.
“So the majority of these people were completely inexperienced and managed to walk out with a pretty great award, all things considered,” Gardner says.
More than 100 schools were listed in the program for the conference, including the University of Windsor, the only other Canadian team.
Gardner says each delegation, which refers to a school representing a nation, had at least 10 to 16 members.
The conference involved three days of tense negotiations within the eight committees of the UN, such as the Security Council and Environment Assembly. While every delegation had at least two representatives in each committee of at least a couple hundred people, KPU only had one, Gardner says.
“Overall, I would say we were pretty successful given the huge disadvantage that we had, and I think everyone had a really successful and good time,” he adds.
Lorne Putman, treasurer of the club, says a meeting involves delegates giving speeches on diplomatic efforts or sometimes condemning other nations. Then, different delegations practice diplomacy by forming alliances to pass motions that solve an issue in advance.
Gardner says preparing for a conference like this involves “countless hours of research.” Completing an essay on the stances of a nation as well as learning how to speak publicly and write clauses within the UN framework are among the tasks involved.
KPU MUN decided to participate in the conference after they attended the Northwest Model UN in February in Portland, Oregon, where three students and the delegation won four awards.
The club researched other conferences in North America, especially bigger ones to “try to make a name for KPU,” Gardner says.
They are hoping to attend the Northwest conference again in February next year.
“We’re currently in talks with the [Kwantlen Student Association] to get funding for this trip,” Gardner says. “So we’re just grateful [for] the KSA’s work to provide us funding in the past, and we’re looking up to them to follow through with the funding.”
The club is also working on hosting another MUN conference at KPU like they did in the spring, which will likely be in “congruence with the Model United Nations class that’s being taught next semester by Francis Abiew,” Gardner says.
For Putman, the club’s success in the two American conferences means KPU can compete with and, in some cases, beat prominent U.S. schools on the global stage.
“As a Canadian, it gives me a sense of immense pride and also possibility in realizing what we can do, and it was quite an empowering experience,” he says.
