Most high schoolers in America have heard of Model United Nations and the majority of Bard students know that the school has its very own team, but what they may not know is that at 7:50 pm on March 13th, eight MUN students and Professor Woodsworth boarded a flight for Brussels.
Bard’s MUN team was invited to attend the Yale MUN Nations Europe Conference in Brussels, Belgium where they would spend three days in back-to-back conferences discussing global conflicts, and learning about international relations and diplomacy.
This isn’t the first time the team has left the country: last year, Year Two co-leader Rivers Curry, got an email from Yale about a conference in Greece. After lots of planning, fundraising, and coordinating with Laura Hymson, the team was able to go. “Slowly and slowly we became more and more sure that it was actually going to happen that all of a sudden we were on the flight to Athens. It was a pretty incredible experience,” said Rivers.
Organizing this trip was a similar process, though funding it was no easy task. The team set up a Go-Fund Me and circulated it amongst family and friends. Some families were able to donate more than the per-person cost, ensuring that any committed member of MUN could attend. In addition, those who organized the trip: Rivers Curry, Year Two JP Moreno, and Sophomore Dari Zell, applied for financial aid and received generous compensation from Yale University.
Model UN is comprised of two different types of committees, General Assembly (GA) and Crisis. General Assembly is centered around discussing issues, writing resolutions, and trying to get support for those resolutions before they’re put to a vote. Lucia Mejia Cardenas, a Sophomore at BHSEC, prefers general assembly to crisis. “You can get so much more done in GA, Crisis tends to be very messy,” said Lucia.
Crisis, however, is the more popular committee among this group of students. In Crisis, not only do students try to come up with solutions to issues, they also have the power of whatever figure or country they represent and can act with that power. Students work through diplomatic and non-diplomatic channels to achieve whatever outcome is in their figure or country’s best interest.
Part of what makes Crisis enjoyable for members like Year One Tajwar Chowdhury is that unexpected things can happen. Tajwar recalls a crisis committee a few years back that got a bit ‘messy’. “Last year the funniest thing happened, our crisis started out being about finance during a recession. There was a merger, a bunch of different crisis committees merged together and they all talked about Global Warming. And what happened was the funniest thing ever, an alien came to earth and turned the planet into Disney World. And he said that humans were not allowed to leave, they had to work as workers,” said Tajwar.
At the conference in Brussels, each member attending is a part of their own committee and represents a specific figure or country. Lucia is representing Costa Rica in a general assembly committee about Latin American welfare. As Costa Rica is a highly prosperous country with concerns about wildlife and the climate, Lucia will focus on using Costa Rica’s funding in an environmentally positive way.
Dari is attending a crisis committee concerning the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He is representing Manfred Stolpe, the Minister-President of Brandenburg, the province that Berlin is in. Though others will likely argue against reunification (like the representative of former President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev), this is a crisis committee and Dari will act with the powers of Stolpe himself to reunify Germany.
Tajwar is in DISEC, a general assembly concerning the weaponization of the internet and gun running—the illegal buying and selling of weapons. Representing Iran, he is largely concerned with bringing an end to both issues. “With cyberspace you can steal information from other countries and governments, so we’re trying to figure out different ways to stop that from happening,” said Tajwar.
When this Model UN team lands back in NYC, they have an exciting couple of months ahead of them. Rivers discussed plans in place to attend a conference at Dalton and is waiting to hear back about a conference at Bard College in Annandale. Next year they’ll attend their usual conferences such as Stuy MUN and GC MUN and hope to partake in the Yale MUN Nations Europe conference again.
Year Two, JP Moreno, hopes this tradition of team trips abroad can continue for future generations. “Last year the MUN trip really cemented our bond as a club and formed friendships that have lasted at Bard and beyond. So I am looking forward to this trip. We’ll all become closer friends, and it’ll be a fun senior send-off.”