Friday, February 26, 2010
By Robin Janotta
Staff Writer
The Model United Nations program broke records at its two most recent conferences, which took place in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 11-14 and in Huntington Beach on Feb. 6-7.
The North American Invitational Model United Nations conference was hosted by Georgetown University and took place at the Washington, D.C. Hilton. Thousands of high school students attended the conference, although approximately 600 delegates were unable to attend because of weather conditions.
“It’s an honor to be invited to such a prestigious conference. Although preparing for the conference was a lot of work, I knew it would be a fun and rewarding trip,” senior Patrick Dexter said.
Costa’s delegation of 38 students competed in 24 different committees. Overall, they were awarded 13 gavels, six outstandings and four commendations.
Costa received the “Best Large Delegation” award, an honor that it has previously taken home many times, and also won the most gavels in the school’s history of attending NAIMUN.
“Georgetown was really amazing and we did really well. Whenever you hear about Model U.N. when you’re younger you always hear about Georgetown. We dominated, and people kept looking at us cheering during the awards ceremony, wondering who the school was,” said junior Nick Zobel.
Although the trip lasted a week, the conference itself took place over only four days. Passing the time both before and after the conference, delegates had team-building activities, went sightseeing and had snowball fights.
“It was a lot of fun bonding with the other people on the trip through all the activities, especially team-building. We had fun playing in the snow and just enjoying the D.C. weather,” senior Gabi Gold said.
A week before the NAIMUN conference, Costa participated in the Surf City MUN conference in Huntington Beach. Of the 115 Costa delegates who attended the conference, 15 took home gavels out of a possible 20. Twenty-three outstanding and 21 commendations were also awarded.
“The conference was a lot to expect out of the Costa delegates, considering many of them would be leaving for Georgetown the very next day. Even so, another phenomenal performance was achieved,” sophomore Connor Toscano said. “It just goes to show the dedication Costa ‘MUNers’ have.”
The MUN program has two more conferences left in the year: the Berkeley conference March 5-7 and the UC Davis conference in May. MUN advisor Robert Timberlake said he has high hopes for both of these conferences due to the successes at Georgetown and Huntington Beach.
“This was a really good week considering that both conferences were within a week of each other. These two diverse groups did extremely well,” Timberlake said.
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