Why You Should Consider Joining Model United Nations at Your School

By Krister Lansing on February 28, 2017

Everyone always says that one of the best ways to make friends is to join a club in college. If you’ve read my previous article you’ll know that I spent my freshman year in London, so this was especially a very useful vehicle of mine to make new friends when I came to New York wholly dependent on my London friends and with my only interactions with New York NYU kids being through a video chat in a philosophy class.

So I transitioned from the rather homegrown and more casual club of MUN in London to the real one in New York so I could meet some new people, fine tune my public speaking, and remain up to date on current events. MUN really accomplishes all of this and more simultaneously.

I was also lucky enough to be on the Travel Team that has the opportunity to travel around the country on the school’s dime and compete in conferences. I have been to Columbia and McGill where I encountered some wonderful people and debated some very interesting issues. But not to worry if you aren’t especially competitive — MUN thrives off of weekly discussion-based meetings and the planning of the conference that your school may or may not host sometime in the year (east coast schools usually host).

MUN is the biggest club at NYU with a rumored budget of six figures. This is not just the case for NYU. Colleges all across America dump a great number of resources into their respective MUN clubs of the school, particularly because this club garners prestige for the school, smartens the student body up, and is a great career prep tool.

If the promise of amenities, pristine resources, and services offered within the club isn’t good enough, then look at it through a social lens. Most likely, some of the smartest, most affable, felicitous and interesting people are a part of the MUN club. This is most definitely true in my case.

Even though faith in supranational bodies has reached a nadir with Brexit of last year and our current American president already retreating away from a more involved role in NATO and the UN, this should serve as one’s own impetus for joining the MUN club to be a part of the phoenix-like revival of these types of very essential organizations. The UNDP is an important agent of development and the current SDG’s set out by the UN are important markers to reach for in our quest for a more equitable and egalitarian world.

The actual UN, located on 42nd and 1st Ave — located very near my dorm on 14th St. and 3rd Ave — has served as a welcome reminder of the principles of good, morality, and progress that underlie the model of this new world governed by diplomacy not war.

(It’s also a magnificent reference point to run by).

Furthermore, if you are based or studying in New York I wholeheartedly encourage you to visit the UN at many of their open events that require only a simple application. I hope that I have convinced you to maybe drop by one of your school’s club’s weekly meetings and embark on both an educational and exhilarating adventure!

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