After school on Friday February 8th, Tabor’s Model UN team piled into a Tabor van and headed to MIT to take part in their 11th annual MUN conference. Tabor students debated in several of the committees including the European Union, Special Political and Decolonization Committee (SPECPOL), and the Joint Crisis Historical Committee (JCC) over this three-day conference.
After each committee session, Tabor delegates grouped together and told stories of the past sessions. We heard exciting committee developments such as Syria arresting Dutch reporters in SPECPOL and President Trump visiting several of the committees. No matter what the committee was or topic, each delegate was challenged to think as their assigned country and tasked with solving their given issues. The issues presented, such as human trafficking in Asia and the Pakistan bailout, are real global issues. The creativity employed is the aspect of MUN I enjoy most. Students as young as 13 put their heads together to create solutions that would be produced by the real UN. Catherine Terelek ’22 left MIT saying, “I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with members of Tabor’s MUN club as well as my committee.” Colin Ferguson ’20, a veteran of MUN, said, “I represented the Syrian delegation this time. In SPECPOL we touched on the topics of global peacekeeping reform, in addition to rights for journalists abroad.”
For my final MIT conference, I opted to try the crisis committee. Crisis committees are fast paced with constant updates that change the course of the debate. Peter Murray ’20 and I were in the Joint Crisis Committee (JCC). The topic was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Peter represented the U.S.S.R. Minister of Higher Education and I was the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. We were separated into two different rooms and told to solve the crisis. On the U.S. side, we were quickly hit with a crisis of communist uprisings in Latin America. Debate was fast and changed quickly as we were presented with new situations. John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Jackie, the missiles were removed from Cuba, the whole of Ireland was taken over by the IRA, but we got it back, and both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were evacuated to Chad when there was a nuclear threat. This all happened in three days. The JCC was my favorite assignment in MUN. The JCC allowed me to dive deeply into the Cold War and the role agriculture played while coming up with creative solutions that never actually happened. I never really knew what would happen next and I was kept on my toes the entire time!
Several Tabor students left with awards at the end of the conference. Danny Shannon ’21 and Yujin Hong ’20 won honorable mention. Olivia Justice ’22 and I won best position paper. It was another exciting performance for the Tabor MUN team.
As a senior, this was my last MUN conference with Tabor. I’ve had a great two years with the team and I’ve learned so much about the world we live in. I have definitely improved my research and paper writing skills, as well as gained more comfort with public speaking. It was such a pleasure to serve as the head of our club this year. I loved seeing the excitement of our students as they learned to discuss, research and solve world issues. I look forward to seeing what our team can accomplish in the coming years.
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