This guest article was submitted by a member of a Top 25 ranked North American Collegiate team, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of this topic.
My first conference on the collegiate Model UN circuit was, as to be expected, a stressful and semi-terrifying experience. The delegates were much faster, more engaged, and more knowledgeable about the topics than what I had experienced in high school. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of the strongest female seniors on the circuit was in my committee, and she served as an inspiration to me both during that conference and in the ones I have attended since. I was in awe of how she was able to escape the unfortunate and severely outdated “gender roles” of MUN and lead her bloc, both in writing the resolution and in doing Author’s Panel. This continued throughout the next conferences I had the privilege of attending, with each giving me more female role models and friends, but throughout the year, I also noticed a painful and disturbing trend across the circuit: sexism and sexual harassment.
At a conference early in the year, I had an experience with an older male on my own team that showed me how prevalent sexual harassment will continue to be on the circuit if team leaders aren’t willing to change the culture. The man was my partner, and spent the few weeks leading up to the conference making me increasingly uncomfortable. First, it was “small” stuff: unsolicited sexual memes and jokes, weirdly long hugs, and far too many I love you’s for how short of a time we had known each other. Slowly, it moved into him wanting to hold my hand while we worked or touching me to such an excessive degree that other team members had to distract him for me to be able to leave. Four days before we left for that conference, I mentioned to a close friend how uncomfortable our interactions were making me and we decided together to alert a male member of our team’s leadership. I didn’t know it at the time, but nothing changed from this conversation. Even on the bus ride up to the conference, I was laying with my legs up on the bus seat so that I could fall asleep, as I hadn’t slept much the night before. My partner read this an invitation to lay on top of me for the entirety of the bus ride despite my obvious protest and discomfort, and even posted it on his Snapchat about how cute it was once I had fallen asleep. No one on my team noticed or intervened.
The first session of the conference ended that Thursday, and I found myself running to my hotel room, sobbing with my roommates, telling them about how I couldn’t believe I had to spend three more days being excessively touched and harassed by the only person you can’t escape at a MUN conference – my partner. That night, I chose to tell another male member of our team’s leadership, this time being one of more seniority, but was cut short as my partner, true to his character, intervened in our conversation. Once my partner left the room to get food, I was vaguely assured that “something would be done” about the situation. Again, however, nothing was done to help.
I sat through the rest of the conference wondering if my partner had been talked to, and realized by his continued harassment that evidently, he hadn’t been. Following the awards ceremony the final day of that conference, a full week after the first time I asked for help from leadership, I decided to call for a meeting with both the men I confided in, as well as our Head Delegate. As I began to explain the situation, it was clear that our Head Del had not been told what happened by the other two, validating my concern that nothing was actually being done to help me. At the time, I knew it was wrong that I was put in that situation and had to initiate two too many conversations with leadership, but I was honestly worried about the repercussions of asking the questions floating through my head. Why hadn’t my concern been taken seriously earlier? Why hadn’t either of the first two men I told relayed that information to our Head Del, as they both implied they would? As a freshman girl facing a primarily upperclassmen male leadership, I was intimidated by the thought of questioning their actions, and was worried that if I did, I would ruin the hard work I had done to establish my reputation on the team.
In situations like this, it’s hard to not let the “Why?” questions haunt you; it certainly was for me. The week following the conference was spent on dozens of phone calls, in various meetings, and replying to copious amounts of texts and emails clarifying the situation from beginning to end, with the people involved seeking to make amends a week too late. I became obsessed, rereading every text and every email for hours after replying, desperately trying to understand their fundamental incomprehension of how bad of a situation I was in at the conference and and how they personally contributed to that. The most painful part wasn’t the harassment; though it disgusts me that this is a normal occurrence in women’s lives, I wasn’t necessarily thrown off by having to experience it yet again. What was more painful, however, was that the two men I confided in are two of the closest friends I have on the MUN team and two of my favorite people to have met in college. Because of this, I want to stress how dangerous it is that even the “good guys” don’t always recognize red flags that the “bad guys” show, and more importantly, don’t always listen to a woman’s word verbatim and trust that their concerns are real and completely valid.
While this was the most impactful display of sexism/sexual harassment I have endured in my days doing MUN, it certainly was not the first or the only. Recently, I attended a conference that had sexist incident after sexist incident on a committee-wide basis. In fact, the frustration I had at this conference served as my inspiration to finally write about this subject. In committee, there was an entire thirty minute period where no women were called on to speak, despite the men already having spoken two or three times each. Women’s crisis arcs were thrown to the side until the very last committee session, despite their relevance, creativity, and merit. When I left at one point to speak with my female crisis director about my arc, a male delegate yelled to us, “Hope you enjoy your girl talk!” With other incidents, ranging in having a delegate mansplain to me how to properly propose a motion to divide the question, despite my having proposed it correctly, to having my chair list out my positive attributes but claim he couldn’t quite see me as a “leader,” I spent the weekend asking myself more of those “Why?” questions. Why do men find women “bossy” and other men “assertive” and are then able to use those as justifications for why women aren’t leaders? Why hadn’t I quit MUN when I had the chance? Why do I continue to find myself in these uncomfortable situations? Why do I have to pick between settling for unfair treatment and quitting an activity that means so much to me?
The bus ride back that weekend was spent answering these questions, and I realized that the reason I continue to participate on the circuit is because, in spite of everything, the moments spent with my team outside of committee have been some of the best of my freshman year, and of my entire life. The two men I mentioned earlier? They have turned into two of my biggest supporters, whether I ask them for MUN advice or help with anything else, and have come to respect that I chose to challenge their actions. The people who intervened when my partner made me uncomfortable? They have become the people I trust the most. The rest of my team? They are people who are willing to learn and to grow, showing that change is always possible. When I left this most recent conference upset about the sexism in my committee, there was not a single person on my team who dismissed my comments or didn’t want to listen to me; in fact, more people wanted to hear my story than I even had time to tell. My concern about turning into the woman who always raises concerns about the men in committee or on the team, and having that become my sole identity, has evolved into me owning the fact that I refuse to accept anything less than the respect that I deserve, which is nothing I, or anyone else, should hide or feel ashamed of. If I don’t, and if we as a circuit don’t, ask these tough questions and hold everyone accountable, even the people we love and admire, there will be no change on a circuit-wide level.
This piece isn’t meant to insinuate that women like the female delegate I mentioned can’t exist and thrive on the collegiate circuit, or that all of the men involved in MUN are sexist, but is rather an explanation of why it can be so hard to elevate to that advanced level as a female delegate. It doesn’t matter if women are still earning gavels; we should be enjoying the journey to get there instead of feeling as if we are banging our heads against a wall for entire committee sessions at a time. Every woman, whether they do MUN or not, has a story of a time where a male colleague tried to undermine or question their intelligence, or made them physically uncomfortable.
So, let’s stop asking women in MUN why they don’t just quit or accept “reality” when they face sexism routinely, simply because it might be easier and less annoying for you to not have to deal with our concerns. Let’s stop putting it solely on the women on our teams to pick up the pieces themselves when they face an uncomfortable situation and acting as though they’re an inconvenience for asking for your help. Let’s stop pretending that it is more important to protect the men and their reputations than it is to protect the women and their safety. Finally, let’s start putting more women on our teams’ leaderships, not to fulfill a quota, and not to act as a secretary, but because there are qualified women on the circuit who deserve the chance to influence the system.
As a delegate who is seriously questioning what her future on the collegiate Model UN circuit is going to look like, this is my plea to you: do your job, in whatever role you have, as whatever gender you are, on whatever team you are on, to put an end to sexism and sexual harassment in our community. This isn’t normal, should never become normalized, and has absolutely no place in a community that takes the pride that it does in cultivating the future leaders of our world.
If you are looking for more resources, check out How to Be an Effective Ally for Women in MUN and How to Run a Women in MUN Program. If you would like to share your story on Best Delegate, email genevieve.pool@bestdelegate.com