Rider Model United Nation team takes home top awards
By Hailey Hensley
Rider University Model United Nations (MUN) team took home a multitude of awards in their annual conference, including the outstanding delegation award and an outstanding position paper award.
The annual conference usually occurs in New York City, but was held virtually this year. The team represented the Republic of Cyprus in various UN Committees as well as Norway in the Security Council.
Head Delegate and senior political science major Griffin Carnegie spoke about his experiences being a team leader this year.
“When I was elected to the position, I knew I would be dedicating a year of my time to preparing a team for only one week of work. Learning how to be a delegate and teaching a team to be delegates were two very separate experiences,” he said. “I’m proud of every member of the team we formed this year and that I had the chance to educate the next generation of delegates. I got to face new challenges no head delegate had seen before and still get the same feelings of pride for my team every head delegate can relate to.”
Sophomore political science major and MUN delegate Maheen Mumtaz emphasized the fact that she feels MUN can help model the changes many young people would like to see in the world.
Mumtaz said, “I enjoyed collaborating with some of the most talented and motivated individuals from around the world to come up with effective solutions to important topics. It was a really empowering experience that showed me the potential of our generation to address some of the most pressing issues.”
Sophomore political science major Andrew Bernstein served as a MUN delegate and clarified that despite his love for the competition, there are definitely stressful parts.
Bernstein said, “I think the most stressful thing about Model UN is the fact that all of the work during the semester builds up to a one-week conference. So it’s not like a normal class where you can always bounce back after a bad exam, if you aren’t prepared for the conference, the whole team suffers. Each week has its own tasks and mastery of each week is necessary for success in the end-of-year conference.”
Rider’s team has consistently received awards and accolades from the national conference, with several consecutive years of winning outstanding delegation.
Carnegie specified that the MUN program at Rider looks for candidates with the right skill set for success, which helps the team win awards.
Carnegie said, “Rider’s MUN program prides itself on doing everything in committee the right way. This means finding students with already established skills and students that can be molded into model delegates. The program strives for excellence because everyone chosen for the team has the capacity to become excellent. We do not sacrifice one skill for another, everyone on the team once conference week occurs will be comfortable public speaking, writing papers, and working diplomatically with their peers. No one person is responsible for Rider’s success, it is a lineage passed down from generation to generation.”
