On Saturday October 24, GMHS Model United Nations (MUN) club members hosted the 26th ever Model United Nations Conference at the high school. MUN members from school all across the area dedicated their day to participating in the conference.
Model UN is an international organization that allows high school students to participate in mock-conferences similar to the real United Nations conferences. They get experience with finding solutions to real-world issues and crises.
The number of delegates in each committee ranged in size from seven members in the Avengers committee to over thirty in Special Political and Decolonization Committee (SPECPOL).The delegates from the participating schools, including Sidwell Friends; Washington-Lee High School; and Marshall High School were divided amongst different rooms. GMHS MUN club members served as pagers, chairs, co-chairs and volunteers.
The pagers had the role of passing notes from one delegate to another and paper. Chairs and co-chairs preceded over the debate and were in charge of their committees. Volunteers helped set up, mandated the snack bar, delivered messages to each of the committees and helped clean up. At the closing ceremony, the individual winners of each committee were announced.
The opening ceremony was held in the auditorium at 8:30 a.m. The chairs of the committees and the Mock-Secretary General, Dorian Charpentier, gave the audience an overview of the goals of the entire day and its organization.
GMHS also hosted guest speaker David O’Sullivan, the Ambassador of the European Union to the United States and head of the delegation of the European Union to the United States. O’Sullivan spoke about national sovereignty and his personal experience with the United Nations.
The conference commenced with the traditional striking of the gavel.
The committee rooms were spread out throughout the campus in the band room, library, TLC and various classrooms in the D-hallway. The committees consisted of the Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Avengers, African Union, Social Cultural and Humanitarian Committee (SOCHUM) and Special Political and Decolonization Committee (SPECPOL). Each committee was given a separate topic to discuss.
The Taiwan Strait Crisis Committee discussed issues regarding Taiwan’s intentions of transitioning to a Democratic government. China’s response was to fire missiles into the ocean around Taiwan. This committee was chaired by GMHS senior Frank Williamson and co-chaired by sophomore Nathaniel Holmes.
GM seniors Anna Barbour-Leslie and Will Earman chaired and co-chaired the Avengers Crisis Committee. It was a specialized crisis committee where the delegates participated in hypothetical alternate-universe situations and served as superhero characters. Their role was to overcome problems in the given situations and function as a society.
The African Union committee discussed the improvement of women’s rights and Africa’s state of poverty to find realistic and successful solutions to these problems. The committee was chaired by junior Hermela Hailemariam.
The SOCHUM committee was chaired by seniors Vicky-Marie Addo-Ashong and Carrington Mauney. The delegates debated and discussed LGBTQ Violence and Human Rights Violations and the Middle Eastern Refugee Crisis.
SPECPOL delegates discussed both the history of nuclear disarmament and nuclear issues in North Korea and Iran today. Their second topic was election monitoring to ensure fairness among all candidates. The committee was chaired by junior Ellen Rhee and co-chaired by sophomore Lizzy Reid.
Dorian Charpentier said the delegates gave him great feedback when asked about how the other schools thought of the conference.
“It was a small, but we ran a very high caliber conference” said Ms. Pam Mahony, the MUN club sponsor.
