Walking away with two awards from the National Model United Nations D.C., Suffolk University’s Model UN team is gearing up for the most prestigious intercollegiate Model UN conference in the world this April. 

The team won an Honorable Mention Delegation Award representing Saudi Arabia in the conference last November. 

“When I became president, I really wanted to try and stress the quality of experience over awards,” said Caitlyn Siler, a junior public relations major and president of Suffolk’s Model UN team. “I love winning awards and I think we can do that while also having a really good experience.” 

The work that the delegates did in Washington, D.C., paid off as they were recognized among the top teams competing in the conference. 

“I’m super proud of how our delegates worked with it,” Siler said. 

During Model UN conferences, every school in attendance forms a delegation and represents a country. Within the delegation there are pairs of two people who work together on specific committees that tackle a variety of issues happening across the world, these committees range from security concerns and denuclearization to poverty and humanitarian crisis. The goal of the committees is to present resolution papers which are eventually voted on to pass on. 

Representing a country like Saudi Arabia is difficult, according to Siler, especially when the team is working on humanitarian issues in such countries it can be challenging to incorporate the government’s role and perspective. 

“Everyone was on a working paper, all of those working papers got voted on and passed those resolutions,” said Siler. 

Siler and her co-delegate Christian Bower also won an award for Outstanding Position Paper, an honor that Siler has never won in her previous five conferences. 

Their position paper was about the commission of narcotics and drugs in Saudi Arabia and how the country is a transit country with drugs moving through it without the government’s permission. Siler and Bower explored the stances that the government takes on such issues and explored how those stances, guided by Islamic law, could be incorporated into a solution. 

“It’s one of my favorite parts about doing this, getting to research and learn more about a country that you’ve never heard of before, like I’ve heard of Saudi Arabia but actually learning about what their stances are on certain things, what the culture is like, it’s a very niche little part of it,” said Siler. 

The Model UN team is gearing up for their next conference set to take place in New York City this April where they will be representing Afghanistan. A 16-person delegation will be traveling to represent Suffolk, six of which are comprised of the club’s e-board. Applications for the remaining 10 spots are due Jan. 24. 

As preparation, the team is hosting a mock conference Jan. 25 at Suffolk as a way for applicants to get a feel for what the conference is like as well as give everyone the opportunity to practice and compete in a low stakes simulation. 

“I feel like a lot of times people stop themselves before getting involved in Model UN because they’ve never done it before and they are scared they’re going to be pushed into making a speech or they’re going to be embarrassed,” said Siler. “I love to remind people that we’ve all never done it before, we’ve all been at a point where we’ve never done it before.”

As the spring semester begins, Siler and other e-board members prepare to prioritize the new member experience to get folks in the door and learn what Model UN conferences are all about.