The Model United Nations team attended the Naperville North Model United Nations conference last weekend, their second conference of the year. The conference marks a return to in person competition for the teams, which had its inaugural conference moved online last year due to the pandemic.

Model United Nations is a competitive activity where competitors simulate the functions of the United Nations. Before the tournament, all competitors are assigned countries and then split into “committees,” like the World Health Organization or Nuclear Disarmament Committee. Each committee is given two topics, and every country in the committee writes a “position paper,” taking a position on each of the topics. While at the tournament, each committee picks one of their two topics and discusses it until they decide on a final plan. Competitors are evaluated on the quality of their position papers and their contributions as delegates.

“I love the fact that the students who are involved in the group are all very passionate, and very interested in not only what’s going on in the world today, but also about taking action to help resolve a lot of these issues that we’re seeing globally,” said Central Model United Nations adviser Samantha Allen, who has run the team for three years. “I think Model UN is such a great experience for kids from all different schools to come together at these conferences, and to work together to try to create plans for effecting change, and helping to resolve a lot of global issues.”

One particularly special element of NNMUN was the keynote speaker who opened the conference. 

“[The keynote speaker] was really interesting. It was given by a guy who traveled the world. He shared his perspective on globalism and how we’re all one community across the whole world,” said Junior Will Blumenstock, who won a “best position paper” award at the tournament.

The conference was run by Naperville North’s MUN team, led by Alex Mantel, Hana Chaliki and brothers Sammy Baek and Jimmy Baek.

“I loved hosting our conference as it was a goal of our club for a long time to host an in person conference,” Jimmy said. “Finally hosting one with all of our hard work and effort put into it was a great joy.”