How have you witnessed sexism within Model UN?

Generally, I’ve seen it [sexism] more at the collegiate level than at the high school level. At the college level, I have repeatedly seen instances where in the unmoderated debates, the female delegates are really kind of shoved to the back of the circle or are spoken over or are relegated to roles like scribe, and it’s not right. It’s not fair.

And I’ve provided feedback when asked by these conferences about my observations. And some of the conferences have gotten better about it. The use of rubrics really helps with the evaluation process in order to make sure that the people who are getting the awards are the ones who contributed the most significantly and the most broadly.

And my own club, based on my observations, is trying to promote female leadership. Going back through the 14 years that I’ve been the leader of the sponsor of the club, we’ve had female Secretary-Generals and female Director-Generals at just about the same rate as males, if you take the long view on that. There’s even been secretariats [student conference leadership] where almost every officer was female, so we take a strong position on promoting female leadership.

We’ve also made statements at chair training regarding zero tolerance for sexism, harassment, and racism; we do that before conferences that we go to as well. Last year during the pandemic year, we set up slack technology for being able to do communication between delegates, so that that way I could be monitoring, providing support, providing oversight, making sure to be able to see what was going on between delegates, and that seemed, seemed to be pretty effective in creating an inclusive environment.

This year, the new initiative that I brought up at chair training was to do a rubric this year in order to be able to provide feedback to delegates and make sure that the awards are going to the right people to make sure that it’s not arbitrary.

I saw some really poor chairing at college conferences that allowed the loudest, most brash male students to really plow right over the female delegates in the committee. And I’ve seen that it’s not only male chairs that are allowing that to happen. Sometimes it’s female chairs that are allowing it to happen, so I have to believe that it’s a lack of preparation and lack of training, and so that’s why we put so much effort into the chair training that we host here each year in order to make sure that our daises are as prepared as possible.

Do you think this issue has gotten better since you have been a sponsor here? Have you seen it shift in any way?

I would say, since I started in 2008, I’ve seen more conferences do better preparation of their students for doing the chairing positions. But there is still a degree of chairs that, I’m sure, are pulled out of bed in the morning by their roommate who says, “Someone dropped out, you need to come to fill in.” And that’s never going to result in good outcomes. So has it gotten better? Yes, but I’d say there’s more to do. Until the position paper research, preparation, and writing skills value at least at an equal level to speaking ability, you’re not going to see significant change.

My frustration with that at the college level has prompted me to make changes in my own conference in order to try to be better about it than even some of the places you’re going to be thinking about applying one day. But my hope is, a lot of my Model UN students end up at William and Mary or at UVA, or some will even go to Duke or Georgetown or Johns Hopkins, which is our circuit. And they will continue Model UN and they will have influence on the organizations that are there. I’ve had Secretary General’s at William and Mary and UPenn and UVA, people that are on the secretariat and are really making a difference. So that’s my way of trying to affect the future.

Is there anything that you would like to see specifically be implemented at those college conferences?

I mean, I would really like to see them adopt a rubric because I feel like the feedback that my delegates get at college conferences is pretty minimal. Sometimes my students will take it upon themselves to email the chairs afterwards, but often they get dismissive responses if they ask for feedback. I think implementing some kind of written feedback form, even if it’s electronic, would value the work of all of the students who go in there. What to improve about their position paper, their negotiation, or their public speaking skills. Some kind of feedback is really necessary because in the absence of feedback, the decisions become arbitrary and capricious.