By PHIL FIJALKOVICH

Yale, Harvard, Cornell, CWRU? If CWRU's Model United Nations (CWRUMUN) Club continues at its pace, it could happen. Last week, from February 17 - 20, twenty-four CWRU students attended the Harvard National Model United Nations Conference held at the Boston Park Plaza. It is one of the largest and most prestigious in the world, with over 2000 students and 150 schools attending this year.

CWRUMUN has attended the conference for the last 4 years and improved its performance each one. Last year, representing Kazakhstan, they received an Honorable Mention Delegation Award. Only four team awards are given out at HNMUN.

Recognized this year for their previous performances, CWRUMUN represented India and sent its largest team ever, even one of the largest at the conference. Receiving individual awards were two partnered delegations: Josh Goldman and Tim Kobie, and Brian Moore and Jason Liao, and one individual: Josh Cherry. With its three awards, CWRU came in 5th for overall team awards behind Yale University, the United States Military Academy (West Point), Baylor University, and Carlton College. Moreover, as CWRUMUN President, Johan Ericsson, said, "It seemed that every single delegation of our team was close to winning an award."

Even better than this year's performance, CWRUMUN Vice President Andy Zupscan added that "only two of our 24 member delegation will be graduating in May, so we have an unprecedented amount of experience going into next year."

In addition to those mentioned, MIT and Stanford also attended HNMUN, as well as several international schools from Venezuela, England, Canada, and Germany. CWRUMUN Secretary of Membership, Joe Peck, said that "working with the students from Venezuela was exciting. It is not often that one gets an opportunity to work with people from all over the world."

The way that a typical Model UN conference works is that the students are assigned a country by the school hosting the conference. They must then follow that country's policy as closely as possible in debating numerous topics in the various United Nations committees. They are judged by the speeches they give to the whole committee, their ability to work with others in caucusing, and their ability to pass a resolution, which calls for a plan of action on the UN's part.

In addition to the HNMUN conference, CWRUMUN has been active in a number of other activities this year. In October, they attended the Lake Erie MUN Conference in Ashtabula and took first place, with 13 of its 22 delegations receiving awards. Later, in November, they held their own conference, the Cleveland National MUN Conference, here at the law school with nearly 120 students from throughout the Midwest.

From the end of March to early April, CWRUMUN will also attend the University of Chicago Model UN Conference, one in which they have traditionally placed in the top two. Zupscan said that "we are always looking for interested students and we encourage all those interested to try out Chicago." He added that the club meets every Friday in Mather House 100 from 6 to 7.

Post-Harvard Report

By JOHAN ERICSSON

We spent last Thursday through Sunday (February 17 - 20, 2000) at the 46th Annual Harvard National Model UN Conference. This was the 4th year our club attended the conference. We brought our largest team ever to this conference (24). We represented the nation of India. In bringing such a large team, we also prepared for the future. Only 2 out of the 24 people (Andy Zupcsan and myself) will not be available next year.

As far as awards go, we came home with 3 honorable mentions (DISEC, ESCAP, & UNHCR) as well as one verbal commendation (UNICEF). The awards were slightly disappointing considering the tremendous effort that was put out by members of the team. Each member of the team was consistently involved within their committees. For what its worth, it seemed that every single delegation of our team was close to winning an award.

Logistically, the conference went very well. We arrived on Thursday, and took cabs to the hotel. These cost approximately $3-5/person. This cost will be reimbursed. At the hotel, we moved quickly to register our rooms and get our materials for the conference. We received six adjacent rooms.

Friday morning was open, and the club split up to visit Boston. I went and sat in on one of my brother's law school classes. We ordered pizza for the club on Saturday night. On Sunday, after awards, we went and ate at Joe's American Bar and Grill with the club as a whole.

After Joe's we took the cabs back to the airport. When we arrived in Cleveland, we had the pleasant experience of being picked up by two full-sized RV's courtesy of Brian Moore's parents. These took the club back to campus, and we made it home around 10:30pm - 11:00pm.

My own personal experience was mixed. I had possibly one of worst moderators at any conference with little knowledge of the rules. (one example, during a procedural debate with a "for" and "against" speaker's list: we had no speaker's against, so we were forced listen to all the speakers on the "for" column. Any motion to close debate before that was automatically ruled dilatory. She swears this was in the rules) She consistently let the committee fall apart into disorder.

Trevor and I put out a good effort. We started off strong, as we came out with a solid working paper and a solid resolution. Our resolution was introduced side by side with another resolution. Ours was clearly a better resolution in every way that counts. At that point, we became a little over-confident. The makers of the other resolution seeked compromise by combining the two into a third resolution. We wanted the process to be amendments to our resolution.

The other writers disappeared and a combination resolution was introduced. It was so poorly mashed together that it included two parts that were verbatim identical. (they had been cut and pasted). These were removed during the technical questioning on the resolution.

Trevor and I rallied the "back-of-the-room" and we had developing countries stand up one by one and say that this resolution was "written by developed nations without consideration of the developing nations". Trevor and I thought we could pull enough support behind our initial resolution.

Alas, the back of the room stopped showing up to the committee sessions. At the start of Thursday, we had 46 countries within our committee. On Sunday, we were left with 23. This could be the largest rate of attrition that I have ever seen at a conference. Without the support of these nations, we became marginalized. We worked hand-in-hand with Brazil and Denmark up until the end of the conference.

The lesson that I learned was that compromise is the only way to win at Harvard, especially on the ECOSOC committees. If you begin alienating a part of your committee, you will very soon alienate the committee as a whole. On the general assembly, you can always find new groups of delegates.

The following people attended this conference. I would personally like to thank each of these persons for their hard work and dedication in preperation for and during this weekend.

1. Disarmament and International Security: Jason Liao, Brian Moore
2. Economic and Financial: Adam Vainder
3. Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural: Phil Fijalkovich, Kris Waller
4. Special Political and Decolonization: John Clark, Bryan Inderhees
5. World Health Organization: Caitlin Kilkka
6. World Summit on Tropical Disease: Aaron Adalja, Anne Wolbert
7. United Nations Environmental Programme: Amy Nelson, Andy Zupcsan
8. United Nations Development Programme: Johan Ericsson, Trevor Jenkins
9. United Nations Commission for Human Rights: Saurabh Bansal, Chris Nuss
10. United Nations Children's Fund: Atheir Abbas, Anita Patankar
11. Commission on the Status of Women: Jim Flora, Joe Peck
12. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: Josh Goldman, Tim Kobie
13. World Bank: Elton Sayani
14. ESCAP: Josh Cherry