Model UN President Alex Martin ‘22 has been debating in MUN for seven years. Following her high school passion into college, Martin helped to revive Smith’s team her first year, serving as Vice President for one year and President for the past two.
In past years Smith MUN hosted weekly meetings where members would debate various international issues and draft resolutions, working together from the perspective of different UN member countries. They helped to host the 5 College MUN Conference at Mount Holyoke, moderated debates, and attended the prestigious Harvard MUN Conference in Boston.
Martin attributes much of the organization’s struggle in the past year to ever-present Zoom fatigue. “People don’t want to be on Zoom more than they have to be,” she said, which led to low attendance at weekly meetings, making it difficult for MUN to achieve its purpose: debating. “A lot of people who came the first week and were assigned to a country wouldn’t come the next week,” she said. The lack of consistent participation has seriously hampered their success.
This spring Martin and her board have tried alternate solutions to further engagement. Rather than drawing out one topic over the course of several weekly meetings, they piloted ‘mini-conferences,’ which would last the course of a Saturday afternoon every few weeks, but include the whole process in one session — debating, resolution writing, and voting — in order to avoid the issue of lack of consistent participation. The first mini-conference was fairly successful, but the second has been rescheduled multiple times as they wait for more sign-ups. Most recently, the board decided to try to host this mini-conference in person, as most of the group is at Smith. Martin is one of the members who will have to attend virtually, but she insisted she’d rather not be able to go than to see the organization continue to suffer through low-attendance Zoom calls.
Martin is especially concerned with MUN’s legacy, since she doesn’t plan to continue as President next year. “I’ve been trying really hard to make people stay involved with the organization and bring new people in because I’m not going to be here forever.” She cited how she’s tried to stay active through the OSE to recruit new members. “I have personally participated in every organization recruitment event available.”
Martin also wished the OSE offered more support for club leaders like her who have been struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic, saying, “It feels like me and the other people in my club have been totally making it up on our own.”
While it’s been a hard year for Model UN, the remaining member’s passion for the club bodes well for it to persist until Zoom no longer exists as their main form of communication. “It’s an organization where the people really care about it,” said Martin.
[Image: Model United Nations symbol (Photo via rhinebeckcsd.org)]
