Friendship is hard

Today during the Whirled Trade Organization's meeting in Lexington, we learned just how difficult it is for important issues to get resolved. The most eye-opening moment was when we debated a resolution for a half hour, only to have it voted down immediately after entering voting procedure. I had done Model UN a lot in high school, but I had only ever represented countries. It was interesting to see how different it is to be representing an interest group because their goals are so single minded. As GM I was obviously expected to have opinions about the resolutions that were relevant to the automobile industry and free trade, but I had to keep in mind that corporations try to be as neutral as possible so that they don't alienate any potential costumers. I had always hated people who abstained from voting because I thought that their abstention was a product of their lack of research, or because they just really enjoyed messing up a vote. Representing a corporation meant that the majority of my votes were abstentions; there was no way that 1 person can represent a whole company in something as divisive as GMO's or international policy. It was hard not to put in my own opinions and stick with a corporate script, but having this different perspective relieved a lot of the pressure and allowed me to really enjoy the insane debates that took place without pressure of having my vote actually count.