The State Champion Diplomat

Craig did so many things that some of his involvement that other people would splatter across their resumes gets kind of lost-- no doubt that's also because Craig wasn't the type to advertise his myriad successes. For example, Craig was a State Champion Diplomat. It's true, officially true! He was my partner for a couple of Model United Nations Conferences, including the Utah State Model United Nations meeting at the University of Utah our senior year.

Craig and I were partners representing the United Kingdom in the Disarmament Committee. The "Big Five" countries with veto power (US, UK, Russia, China, France) are assigned to the most high-powered teams in the state. That means we were competing against/working with people who had done MUN for six years, had gone to national conferences, and pretty much did little else besides foreign policy. It was Craig's very first conference, just attending for fun and a new experience, and representing an 'allied' state was NOT my specialty.

I learned an important lesson that conference, though. Amidst the political machinations that MUN seemed to be all about, and the little secrecies and negotiations and shifting allegiances, Craig quickly rose to the top of the committee instead by just being so nice, charismatic, and consistent. On that very first time, he showed us what MUN was supposed to be about-- diplomacy. He had this amazing, inherent skill for diplomacy. At one point an issue came to the vote that the UK would have abstained on. When it was our turn to voice our vote, Craig said in a perfectly gentlemanly way, "The United Kingdom courteously abstains." Soon the whole committee was working with us; I overheard the "US Delegate" saying that they would just do whatever "The UK" did first. Craig was that brilliant. We won the Outstanding Delegation award at that Conference. Probably nobody knows that he did that-- that out of hundreds and hundreds of people at that conference, Craig Decker was a State Champion Diplomat. But he was.

--Rebekka Matheson