The president of Baruch College’s Model United Nations Team, Adnan Ahsan, won the Outstanding Delegate Award, equivalent to second place, at the McGill Model United Nations Conference, called McMUN, on Jan. 31.
He was awarded for his leadership in his assigned “Game of Thrones’ My Kingdom for a Crown: Dance of Dragons” committee, a crisis committee BMUN represented at the McMUN conference.
“In this, I was able to lead several of these public directives in the Dance of Dragons committee to help my side, which was one side of a Targaryen Civil War, establish spy networks, give desperately needed aid to our people and move our armies to fight their armies,” Ahsan said.
BMUN simulates the responsibilities of the U.N. by teaching students parliamentary procedures through diplomatic competitions. Students must defend the beliefs of and negotiate desirable resolutions for the country and committee they are assigned to at conferences.
“This fantasy committee served us well and we were able to employ classic methods of negotiation seen in modern international relations,” BMUN Vice President Margaux Ramee said.
In previous conferences, BMUN has received honorable mentions, verbal commendations and position paper awards for different committees its members serve. This year, Ahsan maintained BMUN’s award streak by receiving the McMUN Conference’s second place recognition.
“Winning awards at McMUN is an incredible achievement in and of itself given the conference’s competitiveness, not to mention the difficulty associated with shifting an in-person activity to a virtual platform,” Ramee said.
BMUN typically attends three types of conferences: McMUN, a conference hosted by McGill University in Montréal; NMUN, a conference hosted by a non-profit organization of the same name in Times Square and NYUMUNC, a crisis conference hosted by New York University.
BMUN schedules weekly Friday-evening training sessions on Zoom to prepare for conferences.
Crisis committees in particular can be historical or fictional. The two main avenues of parliamentary procedures within the crisis committee concern public and private directives. Private directives are similar to political game theory, since delegates choose who to trust, who to betray and when to act with what power.
“As ruler of the Vale in Game of Thrones, I had under my disposal the Knights of the Vale. I used them to assist the committee in fighting battles but also to frame individuals and do covert operations during sieges,” Ahsan added. “I was able to use them to great effect as our committee by the end of the conference was able to take King’s Landing thus winning the crisis.”
Despite being a fictional committee, Ahsan said that winning this award signified creating a name for Baruch and CUNY at MUN conferences.
“I speak not only as vice president, but for the entire team when I say we could not be prouder of our president for this triumph,” Ramee said.
Editor’s Note: The Ticker’s News and Photography Editors, Anacaona Rodriguez and Iraj Zia, were members of the BMUN Team for McMUN. Rodriguez is also the former president and treasurer of BMUN, and Zia is the current standards officer of BMUN.
