After participating in Model United Nations while in high school, freshman Nathan Putrich was looking forward to joining the college MUN club on campus. He quickly discovered, however, Hillsdale College did not have a MUN club. Undaunted, Putrich is now looking to start the club himself.
“I don’t think there’s many colleges that are well regarded academically in the United States that don’t have Model United Nations program,” Putrich said. “This is a gap we have on campus in terms of our extra curriculars and I know when I came onto campus, I was super excited about doing Model United Nations in college and it just wasn’t here.”
Putrich envisions the club going to MUN conferences as well as hosting events that instruct students on a range of topics from international affairs to how to act in professional settings.
If Putrich’s club is approved, it would not be the first time there was a MUN club at Hillsdale.
In 1949, Professor of History Windsor Hall Roberts hosted a MUN conference at Hillsdale through the International Club, which he founded. At its peak, the MUN conference attracted 700 high school students from Michigan and Ohio. The conference was discontinued in 1971 partly due to lack of administrative support by then new college president, George Roche.
Current president of the International Club Sang Jun Lee believes that a MUN club would fill a gap in Hillsdale’s curriculum.
“I think it’s the job of the student body and the clubs to bring those influences that we can’t find in our own curriculum,” Lee said. “I don’t think having Model UN is going to take anything away from what we are here at Hillsdale College.”
If approved, Putrich would bring his experience with MUN and international diplomacy into leadership of the group.
Putrich, who is from Cleveland, Ohio, was home schooled for the first three years of high school. He still attended five or six MUN conference as an independent while in high school.
After high school he took a gap year, working half the year at the Cleveland Council of World Affairs and spending the other half studying at a theological school south of Budapest, Hungary. While in Europe, Putrich traveled extensively throughout the continent, visiting places like Germany, Slovenia, and Serbia.
Len Baldwin, president of Ohio’s United Nations Association and a professor at Otterbein University, met Putrich at Earlham college high school MUN conference.
“I found him to be very proactive and engaging,” Baldwin said. “Like the mold we try to create with students out of the United Nations education program.”
Baldwin said that the UN is trying to engage with university students like Putrich.
Putrich also has the personality to match his experiences with diplomatic work. He speaks Hungarian along with English and has studied German and Arabic. He plans to major in international business and then work internationally after college.
One hurdle Putrich has already crossed was making sure the club would not have federal funds tied to it. Now that the issue has been dealt with, Putrich believes the deans should approve the club. He hopes to gage interest in the MUN club by the end of this semester and have an active club by this fall.
Although he believes MUN should be approved, some students at the college have reservations about the UN and the effectiveness of its work. MUN typically connects and advocates for the UN and its goals.
“Don’t write off the program Model United Nations, just because you don’t agree with or condone the UN,” Putrich said. “It’s not really a matter of whether you condone the United Nations or not, rather, it’s whether or not you have an interest in learning and educating yourself about what’s going on in the rest of the world.”
