Shelma Jun has been functioning on little sleep this past week.
And it’s not because of midterms.
Jun, a third-year business economics student, is on the
executive board responsible for planning the Model United Nations
Summit, which will begin at UCLA today. She has been up until 4
a.m. almost every night this week planning the event.
Model United Nations, or MUN, is a simulation of the real United
Nations. In it, “high school students take on the personas of
different U.N. member states as they discuss and debate pressing
international issues and try to reach solutions on assigned
topics,” according to the UCLA MUN Web site.
This is the 11th annual summit held at UCLA. It is expected to
attract more than 900 high school students from California,
Tennessee and Arizona.
During the summit, high school students will be divided into
committees that will discuss many issues the United Nations
handles, such as drug trade and terrorism.
The event is sponsored by the UCLA International Institute, but
is entirely organized by UCLA students.
“UCLA students oversee the committees during the summit,
grade the speakers, direct the flow of communication, facilitate
the emergence of new topics. Basically UCLA students organize
all,” said J.T. Hayashi, a fourth-year English and
psychobiology student and a member of the MUN executive board.
Students can fulfill a variety of roles: Some serve on the board
of executives, some function as directors who are responsible for
grading the high school students, and others act as moderators and
assistant moderators overseeing the different committees.
UCLA MUN consists of 12 executive board members and about 65
members of the secretariat, which includes directors, moderators
and their assistants.
All of them spend vast amounts of time to ensure the summit goes
smoothly.
Students have to balance school, work and the MUN summit, and
they have been preparing for this year’s event for almost a
year.
“With all the meetings and everything, we can’t
always study as much as we need, but it’s worth it. People
just need to know how to manage their time,” Hayashi
said.
Atif Beg, a third-year political science student, is the
undersecretary general of staff for MUN, and is responsible for
training directors and moderators.
He said in addition to meetings once a week, he has had to spent
many hours on the committee’s organization.
“Every day I work for at least an hour or two to finalize
resources, as a member of the executive board,” Beg said.
Students must also be willing to dedicate an entire weekend to
the event.
“From 5 p.m. Thursday until 5 p.m. Sunday, I will be busy
with summit stuff, with no time for anything else,” Jun
said.
She added that she had to give up work hours this week in order
to dedicate more attention to the summit.
“Since the start of the year I dedicated at least 10
weekly hours to MUN. This last week its been closer to 25,”
Jun said.
Jeffrey David, a second-year political science student, and the
undersecretary general for external relations, said his duties have
provided him a good education.
“I’ve learned rules and procedures, studied up on
U.N. policies, basically just read the news, so I can catch up on
current events. It didn’t take a whole lot of time, but it
can’t be a cursory thing either,” David said.
However, even after the end of the summit, the work of UCLA MUN
members will not be done.
“While the summits are easier to handle, it is the
competitions that take a lot of time. You need to know your
country’s policy forward and backward,” David said.
Four times a year, twice during the winter quarter and twice
during spring, MUN members will travel to different schools and
represent different nations.
This year they are planning to go to Berkeley, Chicago, Las
Vegas and New York.
Last year one of their members won the best delegate award in
Chicago.
“This year we’re hoping for the best delegation
award,” Beg said.