This past weekend, Blind Brook delegates headed to the first Model United Nations (MUN) conference of the school year at Rutgers University. Blind Brook’s MUN club is coming off a successful year with a total of 21 awards and they hope to continue this streak of success.
The club is primarily student-run, the board of MUN known as Secretaries General, are Carly Kabot, Bryan Wei, Jared Bassett, Christine Argentino, and Samuel George. It also has the help of advisor Ms. Nicole Simmons who helps the Secretaries General plan the trips and prepare the club members for their personal committees. This weekend 33 delegates, including the board, attended the Rutgers University Model United Nations Conference (RUMUN) to compete against a number of other schools in hopes of winning many awards.
The delegates received a total of four awards at the conference. Junior Carly Kabot and senior Sarah Rogers were awarded best delegates for their individual committees, sophomore Abe Baker-Butler was awarded distinguished delegate, and junior Bryan Wei was awarded most-improved delegate.
Since Ms. Nicole Simmons’s return last year she has revamped the MUN club with hopes of making Blind Brook a distinguished school in the MUN conferences. Prior to each trip the delegates meet to research and get advice from Simmons and the Secretaries General. This process is proving to be effective with a total of 25 awards in the past four trips.
Simmons has a positive outlook for the future of the club. “In terms of this year, I am super proud of the performance of the students. Whenever I walked into a committee the students were doing everything we practiced: leading blocs and sponsoring resolutions.” said Simmons.
The excitement of MUN is that it allows students to gain a new perspective of the interactions of international governments. International affairs are often very complex with many different sides to each discussion. MUN allows students to research a specific topic from a viewpoint that might differ from their own views, or the views of their government.
Junior board member, Bryan Wei, was in a specialized committee about the Russian cabinet that allowed him to research a unique viewpoint. “I thought it was very interesting to get a different perspective on international relations especially because Russia is a communist nation in a time where there is so much conflict between the United States and Russia.” said Wei.