{"id":169602,"date":"2026-10-08T11:16:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T15:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=169602"},"modified":"2026-10-08T11:16:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T15:16:24","slug":"make-the-argument-that-changes-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2026\/10\/08\/make-the-argument-that-changes-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Make the argument that changes you"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Siobhan O\u2019Boyle, left, Chlo\u00eb Johnston \u201926 and Victoria Kunc wearing their traditional power red in the lab for Wright State\u2019s Model United Nations team. (Photo by Erin Pence)<\/p><\/div>\n

Wright State\u2019s Model United Nations<\/a> team keeps winning at the National Model U.N. Conference in New York.<\/p>\n

For 46 years straight, they\u2019ve returned to campus award winners \u2014 one of the longest streaks of its kind in the nation. Ask anyone on the team about it, though, and the awards aren\u2019t what they want to talk about.<\/p>\n

They want to talk about the moment their voice stopped shaking, or how they met the best friends ever.<\/p>\n

Siobhan O\u2019Boyle, a senior human resource management<\/a> major, joined the team after meeting members at a student organization tabling event. She didn\u2019t have a special interest in foreign policy \u2014 or any love for public speaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy voice would shake, or I would lose my train of thought,\u201d O\u2019Boyle said of her early speeches. \u201cBut now I love it. I don\u2019t have those fears anymore. And that\u2019s a skill I will use forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Boyle\u2019s roommate, Victoria Kunc, can relate. The senior political science<\/a> major who plans to attend law school said she\u2019d been too shy to join Model U.N. in high school despite a teacher who spent two years asking. At Wright State, Professor Liam Anderson,\u00a0 Ph.D., who co-advises the team with Professor Vaughn Shannon, Ph.D., made an appeal to her future, and he wasn\u2019t subtle about the pitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Listen, you want to be a lawyer, you need to have good communication skills,\u2019\u201d Kunc said. \u201c\u2018If that isn\u2019t on your resume, you\u2019re never going to get hired.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Understanding how Model U.N. would further her own goals was the nudge Kunc needed. She signed up, and then she grew into one of the team\u2019s strongest delegates.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s advisors say that arc is the point, not a side effect, and seeing students\u2019 growth is why both of them continue to lead the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe teach them the skills to speak in public, to interact with others effectively, to do research and work as a team,\u201d said Anderson, a professor of political science. \u201cAnd it transforms them into much more confident human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

And they do it through support and lots of guided practice. Advisors and veteran delegates critique every practice speech, and Kunc remembers her first feedback was about her nervous feet \u2014 she couldn\u2019t stop swaying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had to teach me from day one: stop swaying when you\u2019re speaking. You have to plant your feet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

It took a full semester of speeches before planting her feet stopped feeling like the hardest part of the job. It\u2019s more difficult than it sounds, and that\u2019s by design. Every spring, students are assigned a country and expected to argue its actual policy positions.<\/p>\n

Model U.N. doesn\u2019t ask students to believe in those policy positions. It asks them to commit to the argument anyway, plant their feet and hold the position until their voice stops giving them away.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever country you represent, you need to detach personal opinions and feelings from your state\u2019s policy,\u201d said Shannon, professor of political science and director of the Master of Arts in International and Comparative Politics program. \u201cIt\u2019s a good exercise in resolving cognitive dissonance.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the year progresses, the arguments keep getting harder to make. O\u2019Boyle once drew North Korea.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very hard to blend in,\u201d O\u2019Boyle said. \u201cA lot of the policies go directly against North Korea\u2019s views, so I\u2019m left on the outside, trying to work my way back in.\u201d<\/p>\n

To make it even tougher, Kunc was given the role of South Korea. The two were paired to test whether the close friends could hold opposite positions without flinching. They could. And they had fun with it. After the session, O\u2019Boyle, fully in character, texted Kunc that \u201cthe glorious Republic of North Korea\u201d was demanding Kunc go get something from her room.<\/p>\n

They laugh about it, but there was a lesson in the session that resonated with everyone in the room.<\/p>\n

Later at the New York conference, Chlo\u00eb Johnston, a graduate student in international and comparative politics<\/a> and one of the head delegates for 2027, represented Russia shortly after they invaded Ukraine. She spent two full days on the outside, defending her right to co-sponsor a policy paper while other delegates tried to get her removed from the process \u2014 not because her position was wrong, but because of whose position it was.<\/p>\n

She stood her ground and kept her cool. She also kept her name on the paper on the way to winning an award.<\/p>\n

Ask Johnston what she walked away with, though, and she doesn\u2019t lead with the victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of what I\u2019ve taken away from Model U.N. has nothing to do with the international system,\u201d Johnston said. \u201cA lot of it just has to do with strategies of interpersonal communication. How to talk to people and best present yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 46-year streak makes it clear that the Model U.N. students are representing themselves, and Wright State, very well. In a program that Shannon likes to call \u201cacademic athletics,\u201d they field a team he\u2019s proud to get to coach every year. He also gets to watch students who were once afraid of speaking in public walk into a room of strangers and make them listen.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve learned to speak up, even when they\u2019re terrified. Especially then.<\/p>\n

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