Closing ceremony and awards

We arrived at the conference thinking that there were probably not awards because nothing had been mentioned on the webpage about them.  I discovered the first day that there were awards, but that there were no published criteria for them.  We were not particularly phased by this news one way or the other.  If we get awards, great!  If not, fine.  We did find out when we took the students out of committee for tours that if you miss more than 2 sessions you are disqualified and won't get your Certificate of Participation.  (This was apparently a huge deal for many participants because they all warned my students - don't be gone again or you won't get your certificate!  Most of my delegates really didn't care about a piece of paper confirming that they had been in Turkey, they had pictures to prove that.)

The closing ceremony was an interesting experience.  It was scheduled from 2:00 - 4:00. It started at 2:45 and last till 5:30.  All 100+ staffers were individually named and thanked, and each committee gave out its awards.  Interspersed with this were video highlights from the conference, all of which included clips from the various 'social events'.  (My head delegate suggested at the head delegate meeting that perhaps they should make a video highlighting the educational, academic side of the conference that would be suitable to show administration - good suggestion!)  The PR staff really outdid themselves.  The daily newspapers, twitter feed, video news updates in some of the 'future' committees, etc were very well done.  However, over 2 hours was more than enough.  I left early, after being challenged by staff at the door as I tried to exit (I suggested that I would ralph on their shoes if they didn't step aside).

The upside of the ceremony was that we won three awards:  Outstanding Delegate for Casey in the Scheidemann Cabinet (mock German govn't circa 1919) - he lit the Treaty of Versailles on fire on the last day of committee!  And Honorable Mention for Andrea in the Int'l Labor Organization - she never let Russia get away with crap in her committee. AND....Best Dancer to Casey.  Wish I had the video to load of this, but it in his own words..."it was tight".

WSU Delegation - ALL WINNERS in my book 

Andrea Honorable Mention in ILO

Casey - Outstanding Delegate in Scheidemann Cabinet (and best dancer)