Kristina Lance

Engl 1101
Davis
16 April, 2014

Ethnography

Model United Nations is a community organization on many college and high school
campuses. Students come together at conferences throughout the United States and World and
put on mock sessions of United Nations committee, like the general assembly or the UNHCR.
The students get partners and countries that they together have to represent in these mock
sessions. For example, I represented Germany in the Commission on the Status of Women
committee at a conference in the fall. During these conferences students come together and work
through assigned problems current problems of the world, like poverty, and attempt to find
solutions to these problems by writing resolutions, or law documents, that the committee votes
on these resolutions to make them law. Students prep in clubs and class for these conferences all
year long, studying their given countries and compiling information on their topic, and also
preparing speeches and positions on their topics. Just before going over my observations to start
drafting, I had to write a reflection on my year in Model United Nations. Through this reflection,
I could clearly pick out what Model UN has taught me, and what it has meant to me throughout
this year. Relationships was the one thing that really stuck out for me when writing that
reflection, the relationships that one makes in Model UN are truly intriguing and an integral part
of that groups functionality. Model United Nations, at the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte, is the group that I chose to study for this ethnography. I am a current member of the
Model UN program at UNC Charlotte, and an insider in the group. I chose this group for my
ethnography because I wanted to see from a new perspective how the group functioned and the
mechanics of it. Little did I know that observing this group as an outsider was going to be a truly
enlightening experience.
Model United Nations at UNC Charlotte is both a class and a club at the University of
North Carolina at Charlotte. In the spring, it is an advanced class that you have to be given
permission to join. The class meets Tuesday and Thursdays from 3:30 to 4:45 in a classroom in
the lowest level in Fretwell. I went and sat towards the back of the class in my first observation
and did not participate. I immediately noticed that the students that came in were scattered into
groups. They were wearing relaxed casual clothing and all hanging out, laughing and bunched in
friend groups of two to four talking and laughing, even rowdy at times. A student was leading
the class. She stood at the front, or sat on top of a desk facing the rest of the students and gave
orders or information, on this day the information was about how to nominate people for the
upcoming elections, and nominations were that day. I, also, noticed that several, at least three,
students came in late, and that most of the students had multiple side conversations going on
while the leader was speaking. The interaction was extremely informal and this led me to believe
that this group held more importance in friendships and bonding with people. It was informal
because the leader really had no control over the group, and she was also, not taking the class
very seriously, making jokes, and sitting on top of a desk. The students all lounged and some
were on Facebook, while others were having sidebar conversations, and others were doing work
for other classes. The way that the individuals sat in groups near each other, and chatted
throughout the whole class, sometimes rowdily, and that the leader was often stopping her
lecture on nominations in order to personally engage with various members of the group in a
personal manner, really proved that relationships are the foundation of this group.
The next time I observed this group was in a different setting, at one of the
conferences that they attend. I observed one committee in this conference. They were much more
professionally dressed, and acted in a more professional manner, with much stricter rules this
time. The conferences are held like a summit of the United Nations, and so western business
attire is mandatory. All the students were dressed in suits and business attire, and the rules were
enforced that were not enforced in normal club settings. Many different Model UN clubs from
many different colleges were there to participate in the conference. Each committee had a chair,
or a group of leaders that ran the committees. These leaders enforced policy and rules about
speaking time, no sidebars, no laptops up during formal debate, and other rules. This change
displays a different type of communication and setting for Model UN. However, I noticed that
even though there was a great deal of structure in this observation that lacked before, the
individuals were all trying to create relationships with each other to work together by looking for
countries that their assigned country is an ally with or for individuals that have similar or
complimentary ideas to work with to start to build resolutions. They also worked to garner
support for their particular idea through speeches and through getting up and walking around and
asking different teams to sign on with their resolution and support them, telling them about the
inter-workings of the resolution they were writing or have written. They also got together
through the times when they would break out of formal rules and get up and form groups to talk
with one another. The groups were not formed by any particular process or assignment from the
leader. They were formed through human connection and bonding with individuals. These
groups seemed to be the most important part of the committee, as they continually worked
together on achieving goals. Many of the speeches given during the formal times were about
relationships, and about coming together as a committee to enact something or to get a certain
objective accomplished. One country team stood up during their speech and said We are so
proud of the work that this committee has done, and we hope that we can come together as a
committee to look at and pass this resolution. This was just one of the many speeches that asked
for the committee to come together or to do something as a group smoothly, or acknowledging
the hard work and ease they worked together. Even in walking through the halls for a bathroom
break, I saw many small groups banded together discussing ideas or hard at work putting those
ideas into actions.
The interview done with Mike Corbett, the Vice President Internal of the
organization, whose job is to teach the members how to act and work in the conferences, helped
to tie together my thoughts that relationships and building relationships seemed to be the most
important aspect of Model United Nations for outsiders to understand. When talking with him, I
asked him how an individual becomes a member, and he said the best way to become a
veteran is to know a veteran. That immediately tells me that most people that join the group do
it because they know someone in the group, or they form such strong friendships within the
group that they continue on through many years. Mike is in his second year with the
organization. When asked what makes this community unique, Mike simply stated that is was
the people that you meet, and that Its great because you develop relationships and friendships
with people you never thought youd meet just because you go and debate with people interested
in international politics. He really showed how truly important and meaningful the relationships
he developed were for an organization like this and that shows in every aspect that I observed of
this organization.
Even the artifacts, which are put together as collective works, by pairs, or by the group as
a whole, show that even in doing any kind of work, it is all about partnerships or relationships
and working together to achieve goals. The first artifact I looked at was the portfolio of a two
person team. This portfolio started with an outline of what should be inside, and held rules of the
conference, their topics, their country history, and was packed full of information and articles to
use to during speeches or for writing the resolutions. The students told me proudly that they sat
down together and found and highlighted information that they put into the binder. They said that
it was never just one person putting together the portfolios. The students had to collaborate
together to find the information and put it all together. The second artifact I looked at was a
resolution that a committee was working on. It had many, around six, countries on it as sponsors,
which means that they contributed influential language to the document. The students, at the
conference, told me that they put up the resolutions on Google Docs so that multiple people can
work together to compile this document at the same time and quickly. It also had signatories,
which were other countries that did not contribute language but did want to give the resolution a
chance to be debated and voted on in committee. The resolutions are not allowed to have only
one sponsor on them, forcing students to work together and form relationships with one another
through writing these documents. The third artifact I looked at was a position paper that a team
wrote before the conference. The two partners split the topics up evenly and wrote out potential
solutions to the topic problems, and how their team and country would handle the topics. They,
together, as partners created this document to help each other and to give each other help with
the amount of topics and with coming together to have a unified solution and stance as a team
and country. Throughout looking at the artifacts, it was shown over and over that relationships,
coming together, and working together in the relationships and partnerships was how these
individuals excelled in their organization, and the crux of their success in Model United Nations.
These individuals, the students that choose to participate in Model UN and the
students that have the charisma and ability to connect with others, while they might not be the
most serious at all times, work hard and above all, value relationships. They are a tight knit
group within UNC Charlotte, and they also, build relationships with people all over the country
and the world at the conferences that they attend like Harvard World Model United Nations
which has over 2000 students that participate that come together from throughout the world, the
United States to Venezuela to Germany. They are an extremely unique group because everything
that they do is based on building or facilitating relationships whether that is in class or in
conferences. Looking back, not only through this ethnography, but also, on the year I spent in
the organization, I can now, because of my observations, truly see how important and
meaningful that one word, relationships, is for a group of individuals. I can see how truly bonded
and connected this group of people are, and how they could not function effectively in the arena
in which they compete without their individual abilities to connect with other people from all
over the world, and build relationships with those people in order to achieve the goals they have
set out for themselves. Relationships are what truly set this Discourse community apart from any
other Discourse community.