Over a period of four days between Jan. 20 and Jan. 23, members of the Kingwood Oxford Model United Nations team attended the annual Yale University Model United Nations (YMUN) conference. Usually, members would travel to Yale and stay in the New Haven Hotel for the duration of the conference, but this year, due to COVID-19 health and safety precautions, the conference was hosted virtually.
A Model UN conference is an event typically sponsored by high schools and colleges for high school students. At these conferences, high school students have the opportunity to play the role of ambassadors from different countries and simulate a meeting of the real United Nations. There can be anywhere from five to 35 various committees at a Model UN conference, and students from each school are assigned to represent a country in a specific committee. At Yale’s conference, students spend four days in a “room” with their committee, discussing their assigned issues from the viewpoint of their country with the goal of coming up with resolutions to whatever problems their committee serves to address.
Smaller committees are more selective to gain admission to, so members in these committees typically have more experience and are in the spotlight much more as a delegate. On the other hand, members in the larger committee depend more on the chairs, represented by Yale students, than those in the smaller committees.
KO usually brings around 20 to 25 students to the YMUN conference each year, and each student has to gain admission through an essay competition. This year, 15 KO Model UN members attended the YMUN conference. Overall, between 1,500 and 1,600 high school students from all over the world attend the conference every year.
Leading up to the conference, students on the KO Model UN team put in a lot of time and effort in order to adequately prepare to represent their country. Preparation included writing a one-page position paper, overviewing the topic guides provided by Yale, and familiarizing themselves with the various types of parliamentary procedure.
History teacher and faculty advisor for KO’s Model UN team Stacey Savin helped her members throughout the process at meetings and also provided a Google Classroom page where members could find information and deadlines. “This year, our 15 delegates really deserve a lot of praise because it’s not as fun when you’re online as when it’s in person,” Ms. Savin said, “and it does require a lot more work than just the attendance itself.”
This year’s KO Model UN team is very young, consisting mainly of freshmen and sophomores. However, the team does have some senior members who work to help out the younger members of the team. “The seniors and the chairs who have done Model UN before guide those who haven’t,” senior Model UN member Stella Risinger said. In addition, the team members have a genuine interest in the subjects at hand. “They are KO students, in that they know how to do research, and they’re interested and willing to put in extra work,” Ms. Savin said.
Other than just learning about important global issues, members attending the YMUN conference also get to make valuable connections with Yale students and other high school students from around the world that they would not otherwise have been able to meet.
Overall, this year’s YMUN conference was a huge success for KO’s Model UN team, as members were able to gain valuable experience and make meaningful connections with people from all over the world. The team looks forward to preparing for the Model UN conference hosted by KO, which is set to accommodate over one hundred middle school students on March 12.
