High school students from all over the United States experienced a weekend of international debate at the 15th Annual Los Angeles Model United Nations Conference, hosted by UCLA’s Model United Nations last weekend.
Model U.N. at UCLA hosts both high school and college conferences, and strives to create an educational environment for students to gain a broad perspective of international relations and diplomacy, said Parsa Sobhani, secretary general of Model U.N. at UCLA.
Another purpose of the conference is to immerse students in controversial debates and to offer them an opportunity to be involved in the diplomatic process.
“It’s a way for us to reach out to high school students,” said Gary Chou, the Outreach Undersecretary General of Model U.N. at UCLA.
Approximately 1,200 high school students who are members of their own high school Model U.N. were registered. They get the chance to travel to various colleges that host such conferences.
Opening ceremonies for the conference were held Friday evening and began an entire weekend of diplomatic debate.
Each high school was assigned countries, influential corporations, or cabinet positions in the United States and Cuban cabinets to represent. With these assignments, the students were separated into committees, such as the World Health Organization or the Security Council.
The conference was almost identically modeled after the real United Nations, and the committees at the conference actually exist in the real United Nations. Generally speaking, for high school conferences, organizers try to keep it similar to the real United Nations, Chou said.
In these committees, the students, referred to as “delegates,” were given issues to resolve and assigned to research the policies of the countries they represented.
For example, in the United States Cabinet Committee, the issue at hand was the crisis in Cuba. The students were to discuss and decide how to deal with Cuba, and propose their resolution as it pertains to the interests of the real U.S. Cabinet.
An aspect that is unique to the conferences hosted by Model U.N. at UCLA is the Crisis Committee. There were two crisis committees at the conference, and their jobs were to come up with crises for the students to respond to and resolve. They came up with crises that were creative yet were still serious and realistic.
The crisis committees constantly updated the news and even created videos, such as a fake video of Fidel Castro at his deathbed.
“They really have to know their policy and they have to adapt to the updates,” Sobhani said.
It is also a very challenging task because countries don’t always agree with each other, Sobhani said. Students are encouraged to gain a better understanding of different perspectives, and to come up with solutions to real international issues.
The students were active in the debates, and they expressed both their enthusiasm and knowledge of the issues at hand.
“The kids are really getting into it,” said Matt Sandler, president of Model U.N. at UCLA.
For some students, it was their first time attending a Model U.N. high school conference and for others, it was a different experience.
“This year is a lot more intense. I like the level of debate here,” said Amy Chen, a junior at Cerritos High School. She added that it was also better organized this year.
There are a lot of reasons as to why students are interested and involved in Model U.N. Some have an interest in international relations and some simply want to improve their public speaking skills.
“I noticed the impressive speaking ability (of the delegates). It made me want to be a part of it,” said Andrea Shen, a senior at Cerritos High School.
Many students also have career aspirations that pertain to the real United Nations.
“I’m kind of undecided,” said Chen, but she has an interest in international relations and has entertained the idea of working with the real United Nations in New York.