Six members of the Boston University International Relations Affairs Association shook the foundations of the Great Wall of China in August after they helped run an International Model United Nations conference called WEMUN.
College of Arts and Sciences juniors Dan Freehling, Caitlin Lesczynski, Angela Farmer, Samantha Weinberg, CAS sophomore Eric Kashdan and College of Communication senior Megan Kenslea travelled to Beijing for the conference, which was held from Aug. 4 -7 in Beijing.
Established in 2007 by a Chinese company named WELAND International, the conference is one of the first MUN conferences in China. This year was the first time BU students were invited to participate, Kenslea said in an interview.
BUIAA had been invited along with contingents from seven other universities, including Harvard College, Yale University and Georgetown University, to administer miniature MUN conferences for high school-aged delegates, Kashdan said. The delegates arrived a week before the expo to attend a MUN training camp.
“WEMUN brought us over early to teach these same kids who would be in our Model UN committees topics such as public speaking, paper writing, research and lobbying and negotiation,” Kashdan said.
Kashdan said there were about 2,000 delegates from several countries including the United States, Jordan and Belgium.
Each BUIAA member chaired a committee within his or her sub-conference, Kashdan said.
“Our sub-conference did receive a lot of praise for the quality of our directors (people chairing the committees) and received generally good feedback from students, faculty advisors and staff,” he said.
While the members had led conferences associated with BUIAA before, they anticipated new challenges with this larger and newer conference.
Kenslea said that she had chaired conferences as part of BUIAA, but she had never organized one in China.
“Our main responsibilities were directing committee for our delegates,” she said. “We also got to attend Global Village, a cultural symposium with tables from countries all over the world and performances, which was amazing. The delegates put so much thought and effort into representing their schools and countries.”
Kenslea said WEMUN enabled her to work with people she had been competing against since freshman year without the stress of actually competing.
Weinberg served on a committee known as the “Historical General Assembly: 1994, Rwanda.” Students from countries all over the world comprised the committee, giving her the opportunity to work with a diverse group of people.
“We spent our committee time discussing the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and how the international community should react to such a tragedy,” she said.
After the conference, the BUIAA delegation spent a few extra days touring the country.
“I made many great friends from around the world and got to experience a culture entirely different from my own,” she said. “I can easily say that my two weeks in China were an unbelievably rewarding experience that I will never forget.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
This is actually the second year that BUIAA has participated in WEMUN – Dan was a WEMUN director last year, along with several alumni.
As an alumni of BUIAA, I’d like to point out that this is the third year we’ve sent a team to host a conference at the WEMUN Expo. Each year has been an even better experience for our members and they’ve returned with so much enthusiasm about China and Model UN.