HHS students attend Model UN

On Monday, March 20, Model United Nations attended its second conference this year, which took place at Macalester College.

This was Model UN’s second conference of the year, and third year as a club at HHS. The current captains are Nikhil Saxena, senior, and Sofia Yunis, junior.

Model UN combines world politics, international diplomacy, and social skills to create an academic competition in which students learn about the United Nations.

Similar to other competitive clubs, such as DECA or Debate team, students attending the Model UN conference begin preparing weeks in advance.

“My partner and I started our research several weeks in advance before the conference, both to have sufficient time to fully study and research our topic, and meet the required deadlines,” said Jack Acomb, junior.

First, in pairs, students choose a country to represent. This year, HHS delegates represented a diverse group of countries ranging from Fiji to Switzerland.

Once assigned a country, the duo writes a one page position paper, articulating the position of their country in relation to one of the central issues of the conference. The three topics of the Macalester conference included transforming refugee camps, threats to international peace and security, and promoting access to renewable energy, all of which are present in the news today.

After the team is prepared, the day of the conference arrives.

HHS students spent their time at Macalester working with other delegates to tackle the complex issues they had been researching. At the end of the conference their hard work payed off, and the conference voted to pass resolutions authored by the students.

“Getting the resolution that you helped make passed is very rewarding. You feel personally invested in it succeeding,” said Paul Zeitz, junior.