Written by Sarah Kyle
Members of Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society, earned an honorable mention at this year’s Southwest Model Arab League at University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
James Brunton and Stephen Crowder, members of Harding’s Joint Defense Council representing the United Arab Emirates, placed with an honorable mention for their work on their delegation in committee.
Pi Sigma Alpha sponsor Mark Elrod said the Model Arab League is a practice in cultural understanding and parliamentary procedure.
“The idea is to model as much as possible what goes on at the Arab League, which is similar to the United Nations but a lot smaller,” Elrod said. “Theoretically, [the Arab League] should be an organization that gets a lot more done than the U.N., but in practice it just doesn’t work out that way. Even though they are all Arab States, they still have differences in ethnicity, culture and wealth.”
The students competed against 16 delegations from other universities in six different states.
“We were presented with multiple committees to send delegates to, and committee then had an agenda with multiple topics to discuss and attempt to resolve,” Brunton said. “The goal was to act as much in character with the country’s real views and actions as possible. … A lot on our council focuses on better integration and development of military hardware and commands.”
Co-delegate Crowder said he felt Harding’s honorable mention was a great way to debut in the Model Arab league and that he hopes Harding will continue to participate and improve.
“For a debut appearance, I think all of the students Harding sent performed exceptionally well,” Crowder said. “Before we left for the conference, we only had a vague idea of what we would actually be doing or how to prepare, and it took us very little time to adapt to the situation and begin to have an input in proceedings.”
For more information on the Model Arab League, visithttp://www.ncusar.org/modelarableague/.
