Students in a committee at Rutgers Model Congress 2013
Article submitted by Richard Trent, Executive Director of Rutgers Model Congress 2014
Rutgers Model Congress is a four-day simulation of Congress for high school students run by the Institute for Domestic and International Affairs Rutgers student chapter, the organization that is also responsible for running the Rutgers Model United Nations conference (RUMUN) as well as the Philadelphia Model United Nations conference (PhilMUN). The conference will be held from April 3rd to 6th, 2014 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Brunswick, New Jersey. While Model UN conferences focus on international issues, Model Congress deals only with domestic issues and as a result allows for topics that are more specific and allows students to create laws, with students drafting “bills” in place of the traditional Model UN “resolutions”.
At RMC, students will notice that all of the topics are related through a central theme. The theme of RMC 2014 is “Justice and Diversity in American Society”. Through programs, laws, and regulations, the government is involved in issues of fairness. The government is engaged in everything ranging from collecting taxes to managing transportation infrastructure, to providing health insurance. Diversity does not only mean racial diversity, but also concerns religion, socio-economic status, gender, employment, geography, and many other factors.
With an increasingly diverse population, the government must ensure that laws and policies do not affect certain groups disproportionately. Often times there is no one straightforward one size fits all kind of policy solution, and the differences must be taken into account. At RMC this year, students will debate in order to determine what is just and create policies that follow that principle.
RMC, like many of the other Rutgers’ IDIA conferences, is focused on educating delegates by encouraging students to interpret and analyze politics and global issues while developing their communicative and interpersonal skills. Smaller committee sizes, trained Directors, and the presence of a specialized team to implement the theme are a few of the ways RMC will use to make this conference experience educational for students.
For more information, contact the RMC Executive Director Richard Trent at: Richard.Trent@idia.net or visit the RMC 2014 website at: http://modelun.com/rutgersmodelcongress/
