The University Model European Union team placed first in every possible category during the West Coast competition, held the last weekend in February, where 60 students took their minds off of college life and pretended, for a day, they ran a country.
The University team of three undergraduate students represented the Netherlands in the 2007 West Coast Model EU simulation held at the University of Washington. They dominated the tournament, winning all four awards for which they were eligible and opening the possibility for one student to intern with the EU Council this summer.
“Not many students know what the EU is and what is does,” said University junior Drew Jansky, who represented the foreign minister for the team and was offered the chance to apply for an internship with the EU Council.
Each member represented a different EU role in state delegations: the head of government, foreign minister and finance minister, all of whom debated real issues that were negotiated during the United Kingdom presidency of 2005.
The team won awards for outstanding medium country, head of government, foreign minister and finance minister, which is an achievement the students said they didn’t expect to accomplish.
“For what I can tell that’s never happened before. I know for certain that UO has never done that before,” Jansky said.
The team was coached by political studies professor Craig Parsons and GTF Leif Hoffmann, who interned at the European Parliament for six months and brought expertise with him when he moved from Germany five years ago .
“I am enthusiastic about the fact that the EU is promoting peace and prosperity as well as mutual understanding in Europe,” Hoffmann said. “In short, the Europeans are in the process of building their own ‘European dream.’”
Parsons and Hoffmann helped the students conduct research by contacting the Dutch consulate, providing them with background research, and assisting them with preparing their arguments and strategies, Hoffmann said.
“The Model EU gives students a chance to experience the difficulty of international negotiations, to deal with negotiation pressures, the necessity to compromise or otherwise to accept the responsibility for failure of a negotiation, and to gain a more practical, hands-on knowledge of the EU,” he said.
The teams were judged on preparedness, accuracy, negotiations, compromises and coordination with team members.
While the UO team won all possible categories, the University placed second overall because Brigham Young University won six awards with three teams participating.
Some universities, such as BYU, were at an advantage over the University because they have a great deal of additional resources, such as EU classes and resource centers financially supported by the EU, Hoffmann said.
“It was revealed at the event that we were the best individual team,” said Chris Hemmings, a University senior who represented the head of government.
Hemmings said he gained public speaking skills and enjoyed meeting with other teams from around the West Coast and seeing how they prepared for the event.
“I’m much more confident in my abilities to study and debate,” Jansky said, who might be applying his recently learned EU debating skills to real life experience if selected to take classes and work with the actual EU Council in Brussels this summer.
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