Gavel (Award)

In Model United Nations, a gavel is the highest individual delegate award handed out at the close of most conferences. The name comes from the actual gavel a chair uses to call a committee to order; the trophy version is a small wooden replica, often mounted on a base engraved with the conference name, committee, and year.

Gavels are usually awarded by the dais (chair and vice-chairs) to the delegate judged to have performed best overall in committee. Criteria typically include:

• Substantive knowledge of the topic and country/character position
• Diplomacy and negotiation, including bloc-building and compromise
• Public speaking in moderated and unmoderated caucus
• Writing, especially sponsorship and authorship of working papers, draft resolutions, directives, or communiqués
• Adherence to rules of procedure and respect for the dais and other delegates

Most conferences hand out a tiered set of awards. A common North American structure is Best Delegate (the gavel), Outstanding Delegate, and one or more Honorable Mentions and Verbal Commendations or Verbal Mentions. European and THIMUN-style conferences historically de-emphasize or do not give individual awards, focusing instead on consensus-building, though many independent European circuits do award gavels.

Large university-hosted conferences such as Harvard National MUN, NMUN, WorldMUN, McMUN, and Yale's YMUN distribute gavels across dozens of committees. Delegations also receive school-level recognition — often a Best Large Delegation or Best Small Delegation trophy — calculated by aggregating individual awards, with gavels weighted most heavily.

Within the circuit, "gaveling" has become a verb: a delegate who "gavels" has won Best Delegate. Repeat gavel winners build reputations that travel between conferences, and many competitive high school and college teams track gavel counts as a season metric. Critics argue the award culture incentivizes aggressive floor behavior over genuine diplomacy, a tension that drives the procedural differences between award-based and THIMUN-style circuits.