Costa MUN hosts annual LAIMUN conference

Emily Dubinsky

Staff Writer

The Mira Costa Model United Nations program hosted its twenty third annual Los Angeles Invitational MUN conference on Dec. 2-3, throughout classrooms on campus.

A total of  23 schools and 1100 students attended the conference, 98 of them being Costa students. According to MUN Secretary General Samantha Walley, advanced students debated on both days, while novice students debated only on Saturday. Students picked their own partners, and Walley along with Costa’s other Secretary General, Keeley Parker,  picked co-chairs and legals based off of people with similar personalities, and past debates.

“I would especially like to thank everyone that participated and helped out in any and everything,” Walley said. “It’s quite spectacular that so many people are willing to devote their whole weekend and spend hours upon hours preparing for laimun, and for all of them I am extremely grateful.”

According to Walley, Laimun is docket style, meaning delegates had to write and submit resolutions to the chairs prior to the conference. Then the selected committee dockets were given, and students based their research additionally on how they wanted to amend those resolutions.

“We prepared for this debate by assigning countries and assignments to schools that registered,” Walley said. “Students have had their assignments since October and November, and they used the posted topic synopses to start and then did additional research.”

Approximately nine Costa advanced debaters gaveled during this conference, including Sophomores Sarah Khan, Payton Smith and Ryan Rossow. According to Walley, upperclassmen were chairs, and most sophomores were legals with the exception of a few sophomores that debated and upperclassmen that legaled. The chairs wrote the topic synopses, while the legals were assigned in October, and worked on helping to grade papers and assist the committee during the conference.

“Overall we are very pleased with the conference and hope that we can find small ways to improve for next year,” Walley said. “We went paperless this year, as we had printed committee amendments previously, and that overall made the conference smoother and more seamless.”