By Ha Young Chung, courtesy of Kent News
Every year about 30 students from Kent School attend a Model United Nations conference hosted by Ivy League colleges. Following last year’s Princeton University Model UN conference, this year the conference was hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. The conference began on Thursday, January 29th and lasted until Sunday, February 1st.
A Model United Nations conference is comprised of several committees, each with individual topics. These topics range from the disarmament and securing international safety, to UN protection of human rights. Schools that attend are assigned the countries they will represent before the conferences begin, and students (often in pairs) are assigned committees. This year, Kent School’s students were designated the Marshall Islands, Armenia and Serbia. It is the students’ responsibility to do extensive research on their designated countries, and, before leaving on the trip, they must write a position paper that describes their “country’s” diplomacy towards the relevant, existing UN measures. Students also need to research their topics in order to be fully prepared to openly discuss their propositions as solutions to the given “crises” during 12-hour-long conferences. The ultimate goal of these conferences and their exhaustive discussions is to form alliances with delegations of other countries (which are represented by students from other schools) who have similar views and write a “working paper” that is re-written into a “resolution paper” concerning a possible solution. Referring to other students as “delegates,” calling for “decorum” when things get heated, “motioning for a moderated caucus” to discuss specific issues within the topic, and “motioning for an unmoderated caucus” when delegates need to seek out their allies and strategize their resolution papers are things that are done only at Model UN. Once the conferences are over, not only have students passed at least one comprehensive resolution paper before the “chair” (the person in charge of the committee), but students have also spoken the Model UN lingo.
Since thousands of talented students attend these conferences, winning an award is not easy. However, as a result of their hard work, Kent School students won several awards at the 25th ILMUNC. Courtney Daukas ’09 and Coleman Shear ’09 were “outstanding delegates” in the Legal Committee, and Max Jallifier ’09 and Solapo Ayandele ’09 received a “verbal commendation” in the Disarmament and International Security Committee. Commenting on this year’s successful MUN conference, Coleman Shear ’09 says, “I think that everyone learned a lot about international affairs from this conference and I’m very proud of everyone who won awards. I’m looking forward to another successful conference in the spring.” Vicky Ahn ’09, who attended a MUN conference for the first time this year, says, “It was an enriching experience. I really learned a lot, not only about the different countries, the way diplomacy is run, but also about giving speeches.”
Continuing with the MUN stride, Kent School students plan on attending another conference in the spring. Though researching before the conference takes a lot of effort and attending the conferences is sometimes exhausting, students definitely learn extraordinary lessons rarely taught outside an MUN conference. They learn not only to discuss and think about global issues, but also to work proactively with students of other schools who have come with similar goals and purposes.
