Hunter Model UN Team Sweeps 2010 National Competition in Washington, D.C.

Competing against 400 students from colleges around the country and the world, the Hunter College Model U.N. Team swept the competition, taking home the two top prizes, Outstanding Delegation and Distinguished Delegation. The team also took home three of the coveted peer awards for their committees, making Hunter College the top award-winning team at the national competition.

The team, part of the "International Issues: Model U.N." class taught by Professor Pamela Falk, along with two members of the class who represented the U.N. Students Association Club representing Armenia,  Marcella Rabinovich and Lucrecia Ayala, traveled to Washington, D.C. for the competition, sponsored by the National Model U.N. conference, in association with the Osgood Center for International Studies. Head Delegates Jesus Perez and Noor Ward worked for several months to prepare. Ward said, "It was an extremely successful conference and the team took home much more than awards, they took home a sense of accomplishment and confidence to strive for pursuing real leadership roles on the world stage."

The Outstanding Delegation award went to Hunter College students representing Nigeria: Noor Ward and Yevgeniy Feyman (Security Council), Jesus Perez and Jamshid Saloor (General Assembly First Committee), Zoe Kaplan-Lewis and Jade Moyano (General Assembly Second Committee), Nick Pelosi and Stella Shifrin (Committee on Sustainable Development), Victoria Lassen and Vito Oliver (Economic Committee on Africa) and to Monserrat Macuer and Kathleen Touset (World Health Organization). The Distinguished Delegation award for Hunter students representing Iraq went to Julia Jones and Irene Stevens (General Assembly First Committee), Nadja Boncoeur (General Assembly Second Committee), Katherine Salinas and Samantha Than (Commission on Narcotic Drugs) and Emily Jones and Miri Shpuza (World Health Organization) and the Peer Awards went to Ward, Feyman, Boncouer, Pelosi and Shifrin.

To prepare for the competitions, the Team met with the U.N. Missions of the countries they represented, including a briefing with Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Hamid Al Bayati, Permanent Representative of Iraq to the U.N.

Freshman Katherine Salinas said, "The Ambassador put us in the shoes of Iraqis so that we could represent the country in the Model U.N. competition and he gave us the Iraqi perspective that the nation really needs help to rebuild."

And on another continent, the Hunter College Model U.N. Team extended its reach and international reputation, sending senior Jeffrey Ruiz to Oxford University's International Model U.N. After the team competed there last year, Ruiz had been selected to be Chairperson from the largest applicant pool to date -- from colleges including Cambridge, the London School of Economics and West Point, where he served as part of the leadership of the Conference, moderating debate on the International Court of Justice's 1996 Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Use of Nuclear Weapons.

Published on November 8, 2010