Young Adult Wasta

By : Brwa Aziz

American-style liberal arts education has begun to flourish here, bringing not only intensive academic curriculum, but also the extracurricular activities attached to it.  So many students participate in clubs, societies, and sports activities; others establish new initiatives at AUIS. This makes me proud as a student.  When I see some of the head of these clubs manipulating the titles for their own rather than student and the university interests, that pride . The AUIS Model UN club is one such club.

 The AUIS UN club deserves credit for taking AUIS name internationally, but the club should should provide equal opportunity for every member when it comes to attend any conference. Simply, you have a chance to be a member of the club, but you go to a conference when you have a relationship with the club organizers. Just like the super powers like the U.S. and European Union in the real UN, so do a few students controlled the AUIS MUN club. There are three people who lead the club, lead the meetings, choose students when there is a chance to attend a conference, and move the club toward the way they want only.

Last year, National Model United Nations invited the club to the annual New York conference. Guess what? The leaders took only their friends and themselves. They chose students based not on merit, but on friendship. And of those students, most already held passports from foreign countries. What about those qualified students who have yet to travel outside the country?

Regardless of qualification, the delegates should represent the best of AUIS- friends or no. This reporter has examples of students who attended all the meetings, did research and took the club seriously, but were not chosen to attend the conference because they were not friends with the club leaders. Oh, and not only that. If you are a friend and were not taken to the conference last year, you have a ‘promise’, to attend this year no matter how much others contribute. 

The mission statement of National Model United Nations is to make students, “... better global citizens through quality educational experiences that emphasize collaboration and cooperative resolution of conflict.” Does the AUIS MUN club do that? AUIS MUN should do four things to represent AUIS well, to practice self-governance, to live up to the standards of National Model United Nation: It should have a transparent application process, it should have transparent funding; one of the three should go to each conference, and it should have a faculty advisor.

Note: This is my first editorial on the first issue of the AUIS Voice Newspaper of this year. This piece has also been published on the AUISVoice website.