Four In A Row

Baylor University's Model United Nations team has won the prestigious Harvard University Model U.N. tournament for an unprecedented fourth straight year. The Baylor team competed against 158 teams from universities such as Cornell University, the University of California-Berkeley, Yale and the U.S. Military Academy.
Tournament judges have given the Baylor team the Outstanding Delegation Award for six out of the last eight years. In this year's competition, Baylor represented Argentina.
"This is phenomenal. You don't know how excited I was when the Outstanding Delegation Award was announced," said Dr. Linda Adams, associate professor of political science and director of the Model U.N. Team.
The Harvard tournament simulated the activities of the United Nations, with each university playing the role of a particular country. Each team member worked on a U.N. committee such as the Committee on Human Rights.
Awards are based on skill in negotiating, speaking, resolution writing and knowledge of the nation's policies and of the committee's topic areas. The Outstanding Delegation Award is based on the cumulative number of individual awards received by team members. Eight Baylor team members were awarded outstanding individual awards and one received an honorable mention, the most individual awards a Baylor team has won.
Students who received individual awards were Lin Wayner, head delegate and a graduate student from New York City; Tasha Spindler, a senior from Kingwood; Reagan Butts, a junior from Midland; Allison Harvey, a freshman from Odessa; Trey Nixon, a junior from Charlotte, Texas; Rob Schickler, a sophomore from Arlington, Va.; and Laura Seay, a junior from Franklin, Tenn. Ian Jones, a senior from Jackson, Miss., and Ashley Johnson, a freshman from Granbury, shared an award, and Nicole De Armond, a junior from Gallup, N.M., was awarded an honorable mention.
Other Baylor team members included Kathryn Connor, a freshman from Abu Dhabi; Peter Ghobrial, a sophomore from Baytown; Angela Hodges, a senior from Stephenville; Sean Mathis, a freshman from San Antonio; Mike Merrick, a senior from Stilwell, Kan.; Chris Newton, a sophomore from San Diego, Calif.; Partha Niyogi, a senior from Ft. Worth; Adrian Olivares, a sophomore from Mission, Texas; Mina Simhai, a senior from Devils Lake, N.D.; Kristen Stuckey, a freshman from Richardson; and John Wolf, a freshman from Grand Rapids, Mich.
Because of its record success, the Baylor team has been invited to compete in the New York Model United Nations Conference, to be held at the United Nations in March. "The conference only invites a limited number of teams a year, and it is an honor that Baylor was selected," said Adams.