Florida A&M student delegates will leave for San Francisco, Calif., tonight to represent the school at the University of California, Berkeley’s Intercollegiate Model United Nations Conference.
Students will get the opportunity to actively engage in diplomacy procedures and policy drafting.
The Model United Nations simulates the United Nations, which is responsible for protecting countries from gross human rights violations. The U.N. also create solutions for issues such as climate change, international terrorism and AIDS.
The four-day conference will allow attendees to socialize with students from around the country and exchange ideas through conversations about social policy issues. Some of the various topics to be discussed include failed African states, eradicating tuberculosis and human rights in Syria.
Trashaun Rhodes, a third-year history student from Jacksonville, is excited to get the opportunity to interact with students from around the country.
“Berkeley will be my first actual Model UN conference, so I want to go there to get the real, full Model UN conference experience,” Rhodes said. “I’ve only been to training so far.”
This conference will be the second competition that FAMU’s Model UN has engaged in this semester.
Last year, the group represented FAMU at a Harvard conference as the only historically black university in attendance.
Nkosi Groover, a third-year engineering student from Tampa, believes in the necessity of Model U.N.
“It’s important for students to be exposed to conferences like this because everyone should be aware of different world issues and the many methods of resolving them,” Groover said.
Widler Joseph, a senior political science student from Brooklyn, N.Y., and chapter president, is excited to delve into the event.
“It was a great experience to go to Harvard last year, but I’m looking forward to shaking things up on the west coast,” Joseph said. “This is the first time we have attended the Berkeley conference, so we’re ready to make a great impression for FAMU.”
FAMU’s participants will be tasked with representing the best interest of Canada, Ethiopia, Lithuania and Japan during the conference.