By Krista Roberts
Staff Writer
Mira Costa Model United Nations held the annual Los Angeles Invitational Model U.N. conference at Mira Costa on Dec. 4.
This novice conference was held from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Six hundred delegates attended from 17 schools, including 50 freshmen from Mira Costa. Students were part of committees such as General Assembly, First Committee, Ad Hoc Terror, and Security Council.
“I saw a lot of improvement from the freshmen, and I was impressed with the level of debate at a beginning conference,” senior Jackie Cravello said. “It was exciting to watch them and the pages from the middle school participate because they are the future of our program.”
In each committee, members of Mira Costa Model U.N. served as chairs, vice chairs, and legals. Eighth and ninth graders also volunteered as pages.
“As a chair for a new committee at LAIMUN this year, I had to make sure that everything ran smoothly: grading papers, rearranging desks in my room, and preparing the updates for the crises that our committee has had to deal with,” Costa senior Catherine Dam said.
Students received commendation, outstanding, or best delegate awards in their committees.
“I got a best delegate award in General Assembly; we focused on nuclear proliferation and North Korea,” Costa freshman Matt Sievers said. “Throughout the day, I became much more confident when I was speaking and made sure to comment and give speeches every chance I could.”
Secretaries-General and seniors Laura Vaughn and Selena Feliciano were in charge of preparations for the conference.
“Laura and I, as secretaries general, communicated with school advisors to coordinate the countries assigned to different delegations. We made sure their requests were fulfilled, and continued to email them in the months leading up to the conference,” Feliciano said.
Under-Secretaries-General seniors Alec Kane, Zeena Bhakta, and Nicholas Zobel, managed the General Assembly, Economic and Social Council and Specialized committees, respectively.
“I served as the liason between the chairs of about eight committees and the other leadership members not only for preparation, but also on the day itself. I essentially helped prepare for and supervised the ECOSOC committees,” Bhakta said.
Prospective chairs and vice chairs selected topics and wrote topic synopses at the end of the last school year in anticipation of the conference.
“Probably the hardest part of running a debate is choosing topics that are intelligent and have depth, but aren’t too dry. You’ll be discussing them for hours, not to mention many more hours of research, so the topics are important,” senior Tara Murphy said.
The conference ended with an awards ceremony in the auditorium, where chairs presented awards to the delegates.
“At the conference there was a lot of growth. The main thing we saw was where they started, and where they are at now. We saw growth in their speaking ability, research ability, writing ability, and overall competitiveness,” Model U.N. advisor Bob Timberlake said.” “The freshmen can measure their work really well against other students and see how they have evolved.”
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