Model U.N Competes at Notre Dame Conference

The Penn Model U.N recently competed in a Conference at Notre Dame.  

One of the students who competed in the competition Renee Yasseen give insight about what Model U.N is all about and why they compete in conferences. Her response was,”Oh well it’s a club that models after the actual United Nations and so like you take a country they give you a problem and usually like using your country’s perspective you have to like solve that problem or try to come up with a way to solve it the way the UN actually would.” Siddarth Das who also competed in the competition added,”And it models different branches of the United Nations so for example there’s a Security Union and also the World Health Organization and everybody’s put in a different organization and.”  Model U.N helps students debate and students are excited to go to the conferences. Mr Cantoni commented on this”It’s a good way for the kids to network learn how to debate in a diplomatic way and it’s really exciting to see all the kids especially how they get about the conferences it’s a really neat experience to see”.

 The students explained how they felt competing in the conference, Siddarth responded,”Well the atmosphere is very relaxed but we also had a sense of urgency And we managed to complete the discussion like very efficiently and quickly so we had time left over to discuss other topics that weren’t mentioned initially.”  Renee went on to say,”Yeah you would think that it’s a lot public speaking so you might get nervous which at first I think you do get a little bit nervous when you’re in that committee and everyone’s being really formal but once you like as Sid said like once you guys come up with a couple resolutions and a couple of solutions to problems then everyone starts getting a little more relaxed and you can just kind of talk to people like you you just meet a lot of good friends it’s a comfortable environment after the the first day probably.”

Both Renee Yassen and Siddarth Das received awards in the conference, they discussed what those awards were and how it felt to receive them.  Siddarth stated,”My award was the best position paper award and it was satisfying to win that and yeah.Then, Renee talked about her award and how she felt,”Oh and I won outstanding Delegate in the dissect Disarmament and National Security Committee and winning that was kind of a surprise because I like I hadn’t really prepared that much for this conference I did my best while I was there but it was a surprise and it was really exciting and I was proud”.

Despite their awards the conference was hard at times. The students described the hardest part in the conference. Siddarth explained by saying,”It was for me the topics were one of the topics was really broad so you to do a lot of research into that and it was sometimes hard to find information on certain topics just depend what they are and how your country has that you chose how they’ve been addressing the issue.”  Renee agreed with Siddarth, and said “I agree like if your country hasn’t been involved in an issue but that’s the issue that your committee supposed to be debating it’s kind of hard to join in on the decision without like improvising a little bit or like making an inference as to what your country would believe on that issue.

Each of the students commented on their favorite part in the conference, the discussion was Siddarth favorite part He explained,”Just the entire discussion I like debating the different topics with other people that research their countries was very interesting and even at the end we went into what’s called a crisis committee since we have finished discuss our two topics really quickly and  very interesting since you had to think on the spot and react to different situations.”   Renee explained crisis committees because she enjoyed that, She said,”Yeah that’s like really fun when they do crisis where you have to do come up with a solution really fast to something that you weren’t expecting like they give you the topics beforehand but sometimes they give you an unexpected problem that you have to solve and there’s usually a time deadline on that so it creates like a set of urgency that’s really fun.She then got into more detail about the timed deadline by giving an example crisis and that the time varies with the issues,She stated,”It depends on like what crisis they give you um but usually it’s like some immediate like for me I was Disarmament National Security Committee so a lot of it was about like weapons were fired in some part of the world and we immediately had to stop the violence that was happening so it’s like it’s not like necessarily they give you a set time but it’s usually like a quicker time frame than the the big issue that they gave you.”

By participating in Model U.N the students learned and grow many valuable skills. Siddarth commented,”I felt like I got better to speak in front of others and being able to infer on like what a certain country’s point of view is on different issues and just think on the spot    when you  were called upon to make a decision or address a certain problem.”Renee had a similar experience. She responded “Yeah I think it’s a lot of like networking it’s a lot of it’s kind of like a social activity as well as just a political research activity so you have to be willing to just like to go up to people and ask them how they feel and what they think and it’s I think I learned how to do that through Model U.N. a lot more than I would in my normal life.”  Mr. Cantoni also talked how he has seen  kids grow he responded,”I had a lot of kids over the the last couple of years really become excited about it because they like Renee said a lot of kids learned how to communicate and how to approach other people about topics or even just anything in general so it’s really cool to see a lot of kids that go from a  more of a quiet personality to being very outgoing because that’s what this conference is does and it’s really exciting to see.”

Model U.N is a one-one experience where students learn about the U.N ,but not through a boring old textbook.Model U.N gives students skills they can use in the future.