Model UN reaches new heights
Club wins 13 awards, outstanding delegation at recent Gunn conference
Photo by Desmond Kamas
“[Model UN] is such a great combination of all the things that make speaking clubs great, like speech and debate, FBLA. They have different components of speaking, but this really encompasses everything about what it means to be a professional in the real world,” Yannik Omictin said
At Gunn High School’s Model United Nations Conference (GMUNC), hosted Oct. 8, HHS delegates won 13 awards, as well as Outstanding Delegation. HHS Model United Nations’s (MUN) record at GMUNC is greater than any previous conference, according to their website.
HHS MUN club president Lucas Bandarkar and vice president of conferences Yannik Omictin each won the highest level, Best Delegate, for their respective committees.
HHS students registered as individual delegates and met at the conference.
GMUNC is held annually by Gunn’s MUN club. MUN attended GMUNC in 2015, winning only one award. Among the estimated 200 other delegates at this year’s conference, Homestead’s delegation was the largest, Bandarkar said.
“This year, 46 people signed up for Gunn MUN, which is almost three times more than last year, so the club is growing,” he said.
At a conference, students serve as delegates who attend committees from history or from the modern United Nations. However, the results of the committees may stray from history depending on how the delegates behave, allowing scenarios from world peace to biowarfare.
Seniors Lucas Bandarkar, left, and Brandon Herren shake hands after both were awarded by the U.K. Executive Cabinet chairs. “I think the committee was really fun. … A lot of people got out of hand, but I honestly enjoyed it,” Bandarkar said, in reference to Herren’s Helping Allies Reach American Military Bases Enactment.
“All the members together try to come up with a resolution while still putting forward their own country’s ideology,” Bandarkar said.
GMUNC hosted five committees: the 1966 Chinese Politburo, the 1937 U.K. Executive Cabinet, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC) and the Special Political and Decolonization Committee (SPECPOL). Gunn’s MUN secretariat provided background information on each committee for MUN members to learn their roles and prepare.
Before GMUNC, MUN also held a demo mock conference on Sep. 23 in the cafeteria, based on Brexit and the refugee crisis, Bandarkar said. The conference provided opportunities for the large number of underclassmen
that have joined to learn about MUN before GMUNC.
“It’s just like a regular conference, except it’s really low-key,” Bandarkar said. “We don’t dress up and there aren’t any awards or anything, we’re just practicing.”
MUN members were also prepared through weekly club meetings and workshops.
Model United Nations club president Lucas Bandarkar, far left, presents as William Ormsby-Gore to the 1937 U.K. Executive Cabinet committee.
“This year we had three people working on getting the members prepared, so this year’s been very well done,” Bandarkar said. “We’ve done all these packets to guide [the members] through their research, we have position paper workshops and different committees.”
Currently, the club is preparing for its next conference, East Bay Model United Nations, in December.
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