Newspapers / St. Andrews University Student … / May 13, 1983, edition 1 / Page 3
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Friday, May 13,1983 SA Students Experience United Nations The Lance Page 3 NEW YORK, NY-For the student of international af fairs, there are few classrooms greater than the United Nations. Being witness to the international exchange between the member nations and able to participate in simulation ex ercises is an educational ex perience no textbook can match. For that' reason nine St. Andrews Presbyterian College students participated recently in the National Model United Nations Con ference in New York City. The oldest and largest even of its kind, this conference brought together more than 1200 college students from 115 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The St. Andrews delegation was assigned the country of Portugal to repre sent. An exciting alternative to traditional education, NMUN provides an oppor tunity to learn firsthand about the United Nations, world issues, international negotiation and foreign af fairs. The students on each delegation were required to familiarize themselves with the foreign policy of their assigned countries months before the conference. Issues covered included the threat of nuclear war, fighting in Central America and the Middle East, human rights violations, the world economic situation, the status of women and the drafting of a convention against mercenaries. At the conference, the stu dent delegates actively pur sued their nation’s policy goals through five days of public debate, private con sultation, sessions v/ere held at the U.N. General Assembly Hall. For Bob Ransom, a junior business adminsfration ma jor from Woodbine, Maryland, the experience was worth an entire semester in the classroom. “Being a rookie at politics, it was a real adventure for me,” Ransom said. “I learn ed a lot about how a country should represent and market itself, and I learned a lot about other countries and how they stand. But I think the most important fact I learned was the importance one word could have on a na tion’s econmoy. All 115 countries would argue over one word before a resolution could be written.” In addition to their direct involvement in the series of iniulations, students had the Opportunity to hear about and discuss current issues '"'ith experts from the United Nations community. One such highlight was the keynote address made by James O.C. Jonah, Secretary General of the Second World Conference to Combat racism and Racial Discrimination. Each com mittee also had the oppor tunity to hear and question a member of the U.N. Secretariat who was an ex pert on the item the commit tee was considering. Briefings on national policy were arranged for most delegations at the per manent mission of their assigned country to the United Nations. The St. An drews’ delegation visited the Portugese Mission to discuss issues of importance to Por tugal. Citations were given to the student delegations that best represented the policies of their countries. Portugal, be ing a country of low visibility in the international com munity, would not normally offer many opportunities for the Sl^. Andrews-staffed delegation to draw atten tion. But the local students succeeded in getting noticed when they pushed for an ad dition to the U.N. committee agendas. Based on information pro vided by the Portugese Mis sion, the St. Andrews students called for an im mediate withdrawal of In donesia from East Timor, an island at the eastern end of (the Indonesian Archipelago which is divided politically between Indonesia and Por tugal. Although the measure fail ed in the end, Head Delegate Michael Johnson, a senior from Chesterfield, S.C., said the reason was time and not votes.. Two important votes were won in the Economic and Social Council Commit tee, resulting in a resolution that the committee on human rights look at the question of East Timor-an achievement that Portugal had been unable to accomplish in the United Nations’ regular ses sions. According to Johnson, the United Nations does consider what takes place in the aii- nual simulation. After all, is the “closest thing you can create to a U.N. experience.” “The U.N. delegates understand that sometirnes wha| happens in a simulation overlaps into what a person actually feels should be done,” Johnson said. Whether or not the St. An drews delegation affected the world in some way remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure. They wre learning international affairs in one of jthe world’s greatest classrooms. MBNSSCf Part of a group of S.A. students who recently visited the local J.P. Stevens Plant. Student Drug Abuse Declines Student drug use seems to have declined over the last year, according to two recent studies. “Since 1979 there’s been a leveUng off of the use of marijuana among young people,” reports Gayle Saunders, a spokeswoman for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which sponsored a George Washington University survey of some 5000 households’ drug habits. There’s also been a “significant decline” in the use of other drugs, which NIDA reads as “a reversal of earlier trends of escalating drug abuse,” Saunders adds. Similarly, the University of Michigan’s annual survey of some 17,000 high school seniors found declines in the uses of marijuana, cocaine, stimulants, sedantives, tran quilizers and hallucinogens. “A serious recession,” observes Dr. Lloyd Johnston,director of the Michigan study, “has its own sobering influence on youth.” Six out of every 10 seniors have tried marijuana, the survey found, but only 29 percent used it frequently in 1982. In 1979, when the downward trend in daily marijuana use began, 37 per cent of the seniors claimed to smoke marijuana daily. “It is important to put the good news in perspective,” Johnston wrote in a state ment accompanying the study’s release. “While it’s true that there has been a decline or leveling for virtually all types of used drugs, it is still the case that an exceptional number of American young people are involved to some degree in il licit drug use,” he says. “By the time they finish high school, nearly two- thirds of our young people have tried an illicit drug and over one-third have tried an illicit drug other than mair- juajia.” Johnston attributes the decline in the use of am phetamines, which ranked behind only marijuana and alcohol as the most used drugs, to tougher state laws against the sale of non- perscription “look-alike” drugs. Michigan and NIDA disagree on alcohol and cigarette use patterns. NIDA found that, among 18-to-25-year-olds, fewer people are drinking and smoking regularly. In 1979, 76 percent of the “young adult’ population drank alcohol, versus 68 per cent in 1982. Thirty-eight percent of the young adults now smoke, compared to 43 percent in 1979. But the Michigan survey, which tracked “a dramatic decline” in cigarette smoking between 1977 and 1981, found in 1982 the decline has “halted and perhaps even begun to reverse.” Among high school seniors, Johnston discovered “some evident that there ac tually may be some very gradual diminution in alcohol use.” Besides the economy, Johnston attributes most of the declines to greater health concerns, to more effectiv” anti-drug abuse programs and that “we are past certain historical crises like Vietnam and W'atergate which so alienated our younger generations.” Engineering Jobs Are Hard To Find -Engineering and computer science grads, guaranteed a pick of jobs in recent years, may have a harder time lan ding work this year, accor ding to a new survey of engineering firms’ hiring plans by Peterson’s Guides. The survey found that three-fourths of the 765 high- tech employers who respond ed planned either to keep hir ing at 1982 levels, or to hire fewer newly-graduated engineering and computer science majors. “In previous years, the engineer didn’t have to work hard to get a job,” says San dra Grundfest, who edited the guide to high-tech employment. This year, grads will “have to scramble, start early, and make decisions early,” she advises. Grundfest adds it may be a little early to feel sorry for the high-tech grads. Their job market is worse when compared to demand for their services in prior years, but it’s positively rosy in comparison to what other students have to endure to get jobs. “I don’t think there is a serious unemployment pro blem for engineers,” she eont. on p. 8
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