Model UN Goes Virtual

Normally, Brooks School's Model United Nations team studies and practices together before traveling as a group to Boston, where they participate in the annual BosMUN conference hosted by Boston University. But 2021 is, of course, no normal year.

Instead, the team prepared mostly independently and embraced the international aspect of this exercise in global diplomacy joining the virtual conference via Zoom and Discord on February 5-7 from campus and from their homes — one as far away as Shanghai.

"While we were disappointed to not be debating in person, the virtual conference captured the drama, debate, and compromise of Model UN," team advisor and Chair of the History Department Michele Musto wrote in an email to the Brooks community. And following in the footsteps of prior Brooks teams — including those in the 2019 and 2020 conferences — this year's team of 19 still scored multiple awards for their role in the competition:

• Melanie Kaplan '23 won a Verbal Commendation, Hungary, DISEC
• Shalini Navsaria '23 won a Verbal Commendation, Hungary, SPECPOL
• Natalie Ho '23 won Best Position Paper, Yemen, Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Caroline Samoluk '21 won Honorable Mention, Moira McGuigan, British Monarchy

"While we all missed the fun of traveling to Boston, we still got to enjoy . . . debating politics and history," Musto said, calling BosMun "an extremely intensive weekend and possibly more so, virtually."

This year, students represented Yemen and Hungary in the General Assembly and Economic and Social Committees. For Specialized and Crisis Committees, they debated topics ranging from the Trojan War and the Battle of Culloden to futuristic crisis committees on the state of the British Monarchy after Elizabeth II and North Korea after Kim Jong-Un.

Participants currently on campus gathered as a team in the Science Forum for the opening and closing ceremonies. For the committee sessions, though, students joined the conference on their laptops in the library.

All in all "it was a busy weekend," reflected Musto. "Papers were sponsored. Resolutions were signed. Ideas were debated. We virtually travelled through time . . . craziness ensued and fun was had by all."

See a photo album of BosMUN 2021 at brooksschoolphotos.com.

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