Club Profile: UNSOC

Twice a week, in the right areas of U of T, someone might find themselves walking by a room from which the echoes of passionate debate, heated rhetoric, and pleas for moderation drift into the hallways. A student could be forgiven for mistaking the purpose of these discussions for something more formal, an important political meeting, perhaps, or a round-table discussion involving experts in a particular field. The members of U of T’s United Nations Society, or UNSOC, will one day be those individuals – but for now, they are still undergraduate students participating in one of U of T’s many student clubs.
 
Although this university’s students may be more familiar with some of its other debate teams, the same cannot be said of the various participants in Model United Nations conferences across North America. According to its president, Katie D’Angelo, “UNSOC’s pretty old, but it only started travelling in the past six years or so. We’ve only started to make a name for ourselves recently, so I guess that’s almost more impressive because other teams have been around for a long time, and they get paid for it completely and we don’t, and we do better.” These teams, from universities across Canada, United States – top universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown both host and compete at conferences – and numerous other countries from around the world, consider UNSOC’s teams to be worthy rivals. Its members have received numerous awards at top conferences, and as a result, UNSOC is rewarded with some of the most important countries or roles to represent at these conferences. Some of the conferences UNSOC plans to send teams to this year will be held at Yale (next week), Georgetown in Washington, D.C., McGill, and Harvard; this year, a team will even go to London (England, not Ontario!).
 
There is, however, far more to UNSOC than sending well-trained teams to conferences around the world. For every member that competes seriously on the world stage, there is another who just enjoys the fun of occasional debate with other club members. Twice-weekly training sessions are held for the purpose of training members for model UN, but there are other benefits to participation, too. Far from being an elitist debate club, all members, whether new or old, experienced or not, are encouraged to participate, through standing up and speaking, or collaborating on a paper proposing solutions to the problems they discuss. As a result, even for members who are not planning a career in politics, UNSOC’s training sessions are excellent practice for developing self-confidence, and many important life skills: public speaking, quick thinking, collaboration with individuals of disparate views, and writing plans of action. “People from UNSOC have gotten into LSC, Harvard, Columbia, King’s College,” Katie says. Additionally, given the topics of debate, members often find themselves learning about and discussing current world events – members don’t have to be studying International Relations to be interested or participate! In fact, UNSOC’s membership and executive include students from a variety of different areas of study.

Of course, as with all clubs, UNSOC, and other model UN conferences, can be great places to meet new people and make lasting friendships. Katie says that, “Not only has UNSOC become my main group of friends, people I see the most, they’re also very good influences. Everyone in UNSOC does very well academically, and I don’t know why that is; it’s just the way it’s always been. So I think they’re very good influences to be around, and if you’re in first year, I feel like it’s really easy to find someone with the same interests as you.” It’s just that, unlike many other clubs, these friends may one day become the UN’s Secretary General – or the Prime Minister of Canada. Whatever they do become, UNSOC’s members have bright futures ahead of them!
 
UNSOC meets twice weekly: Wednesdays from 7-9pm, and Fridays from 3-5pm. Information is posted on their website, www.unsoc.org. New members are always welcome!