Angelo State MOAS Students Win Conference Awards

Andreas Chavez of Roca, Neb., and Gadiel McDonald of Veribest, both political science majors at Angelo State University, were honored at the 20th annual Eugene Scassa Mock Organization of American States (ESMOAS) Conference earlier this month at Texas State University in San Marcos.

In the conference’s Collegiate Summit of the Americas Competition, both Chavez and McDonald were named Outstanding Committee Delegates. McDonald also earned an Honorable Mention Award in the Outstanding Ambassador judging for his individual performance in the General Assembly, where he portrayed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Chavez and McDonald attended the conference with 17 other members of ASU’s Model Organization of America States student organization. They divided into groups to act as delegations for Canada and Colombia, prepared resolutions for debate, followed parliamentary procedures, and debated and approved resolutions in their respective committees pertaining to issues of the Organization of American States (OAS) system.

Other ASU students who attended the conference included Estefen Alba, Thomas Bedrick, Juan Benavides, Evelyn Burch, Pascual Callejas, Ethan Coulter, Alex Garcia, Rogan Hibbitts, Steve Kim, Katelyn Marshall, Jonathon Moore, Cameron Niblock, Chasity Paxton,  Jaime Perez, Christopher Rapp, Kayla Valdez and Miah Wagnon. Dr. Matthew Gritter, assistant professor of political science, is the group’s faculty advisor. Their trip to the conference was supported by ASU’s Student Organization Leadership Fund and the Office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities.

The ASU group competed against teams from Baylor University, Concordia University, St. Mary’s University, Texas State University, Texas A&M University-International, U.A.N.L. Nuevo Leon and Universidad Regiomontana.

The ESMOAS is an academically-centered program that brings together the nation’s best and brightest college students to debate the issues facing the nations in North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean. More details are available at http://esmoas.org.

Formed in 1948, the OAS was established to achieve an order of peace and justice among its member states, promote their solidarity, strengthen their collaboration, and defend their sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence. Its membership consists of all 35 independent states of the Americas. More details are available at www.oas.org.