Model United Nations Takes Second at Boston Conference

The Phillips Exeter Academy Model United Nations’ club (PEAMUN) won Outstanding Small Delegation for the first time in three years at Boston University’s high school conference (BosMUN) the weekend of Feb. 5. Out of the 20-person delegation, nine brought home individual awards.Boston Invitational Model United Nations Conference (BosMUN) is a three-day simulation of the United Nations. This year was the 15th anniversary of BosMUN and the seventh time Exeter has sent a delegation to the event.Prep Mark Blekherman and upper Hojoon Kim were both awarded Best Delegate. Postgraduate Hebe Hilhorst and seniors Will Rau and Michael Shao were all awarded Outstanding Delegate. Upper Jiro Mizuno and lower Sherry Lim were both awarded Honorable Delegate. Upper Eugene Nakamoto and lower Alexis Gorfine were awarded Commendation. Together, these nine awards totalled the most out of all the small delegations in attendance at BosMUN. The conference was comprised of 27 committees, six of which were General Assemblies (GAs), each with three to four hundred people. The rest were smaller committees falling under three categories: Economic and Social Councils, Specialized and Crisis, with 18 to 20 people in each.

“We were more prepared for this MUN conference than we had been since this board had turned over and even since the last board had turned over.”

Before the conference, Boston University sent the PEAMUN board a list of 20 spots in the different committees for assignment. Typically, board members are placed in the more challenging, smaller committees and novices are placed in GAs.According to Rau, one of the co-presidents of PEAMUN, the board faces the task of picking who attends the conferences. The board of nine people consists of two co-presidents, a director of external affairs, a director of internal affairs, two directors of training, a director of finance and three associates, who collaborate in picking a representative group comprised of both experienced delegates and novices who have committed time to learning and participating in the club.PEAMUN adviser and mathematics instructor Aviva Halani thought that Exeter made a great showing at the conference and was very proud of the delegation’s recognition. “It was a weekend full of debate and diplomacy,” Halani said. “As recognition of all the hard work our students did, the organizers awarded us Outstanding Small Delegation, which is essentially second place for our size.”Originally few board members were assigned to BosMUN as all of them planned to attend Yale University’s conference (YMUN) in January. However, due to a blizzard in Connecticut the weekend of YMUN, Exeter could not to attend. Seeking to give several seniors a chance to attend one last conference and bring closer to what was an integral and enduring part of their Exeter experiences, the board allowed several last minute additions to the BosMUN roster.One of the senior board members was co-president Sam Millner, who will be going abroad in the spring to Washington D.C. He explained how his interest in politics started with his participation in MUN. “Being able to bring Harkness beyond the classroom and to delegates from across America was formative, and I can’t wait to take it to Washington next term,” Millner said.For Hilhorst, who is an international student from New Zealand, this was her first American MUN conference. She pointed out that the main difference between her past experiences abroad and at BosMUN was that as a delegate she was expected to come up with her own resolution instead of adapting to an already existing one. “I enjoyed the change a lot because it forces us to work together, listen to other opinions and compromise,” Hilhorst said.Rau attributes PEAMUN’s success at BosMUN to the expectation to prepare that the board pressed on the attendees. Starting six weeks before the event, Millner and Rau sent out weekly emails tasking each person with a checklist of checkpoints to help prepare for the event. In addition, the group met several times to read and edit position papers.Position papers discuss the country that the writer will represent, the delegation’s view on that country and how they plan to represent it in the conversation of their committee. Typically, position papers must be submitted to the chair, the person who runs each committee, a week before the conference. However, the board set an earlier due date so that each person would have to repeatedly look at their topic. “I think that we were more prepared for this MUN conference than we had been since this board had turned over and even since the last board had turned over,” Rau said. “There was never a day that went by that the people who were attending the conference didn’t think about it at least twice.”Director of External Affairs Shao agreed with Rau that a lot of rigorous work from the board, especially from upper Eric Tang and senior Lily Friedberg, the two directors of training, helped the team win.“BOSMUN was a very good conference in comparison to the rest, very well organized,” Shao said.Besides preparation of written work, some of Exeter’s delegates said that they had a strategy for their speaking as they headed into this conference. Many, such as Hilhorst, recognized as an “Outstanding Delegate” for her representation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, relied on past experience. She said, “[I] Rely on quantity, not quality of speeches — people don’t really listen, they just get an impression of how often they hear your voice.”As for other strategies, Gorfine said that, although daily Harkness in class helped her speaking capabilities, the fact that the topics interested her contributed even more to her success. “The topics for my committee were really interesting; we mainly discussed human trafficking, and it was wonderful working with the other delegates from all over the world to come up with solutions to the problem,” she said.BosMUN itself is very different from most other MUN conferences. As a three-day simulation of the United Nations, it is a full immersion in the United Nations experience—a setting that requires diplomacy, poise and eloquent speaking skills. These skills, which are less often practiced by high school students, are exactly the skills learned around Exeter’s Harkness table.Millner encouraged students to join PEAMUN and emphasized the important skills it teaches outside of the classroom. “To anyone thinking about joining, I would say that MUN is the optimal synthesis of the Harkness skills and the writing skills we learn at Exeter,” Millner said. “It’s a great opportunity to apply those skills in a valuable, real-world context.”