Costa’s Model United Nations participates in virtual conference

By Kelly Fraenkel 

Staff Writer

Mira Costa’s Model United Nations (MUN) program hosted their 26th annual Los Angeles Invitational MUN (LAIMUN) Conference on Dec. 5 and 6 via Zoom. 

Seven schools and a total of 750 delegates participated in the conference. Novice delegates debated on Saturday and advanced delegates debated into Sunday. Secretary Generals (SG) and Costa seniors Thomas Gerken and Owen Buckley managed over 70 LAIMUN staff members and multiple Zoom rooms. Under Secretary Generals (USG) and seniors Carter Buckley, Nicole Bolsajian, Hunter Kolodziej and Juliana Ibaraki worked to train student chairs on debate procedures and how to run debate in an online format. 

“This year LAIMUN was structured to account for 20 virtual committees and about five miscellanous meeting rooms,” Owen Buckley said. “The committee rooms are where the substantive debate occurred with our delegates. All 20 [rooms] had an average of about 35 delegates each, with four Costa staff members running them. They were responsible for managing the debate, calling on speakers and reporting issues they were experiencing in real time to the secretariat, who would then address any issues that came up with delegates, or more prominently, technology.” 

LAIMUN is typically held on campus at Mira Costa and requires a significant amount of planning by the Secretary Generals in the summer and fall before the conference is held. Buckley and Gerken originally planned an in-person conference following LA County and CDC guidelines. In August, they made the decision to move the debate to an entirely online environment. 

“This was a very challenging experience,” Buckley said. “Since no one could really understand the likelihood of whether we would go back to school in the fall, we had to be safe and plan on an in-person conference. Another curveball came in August when we made the decision to move everything online, which essentially meant we had to start planning from scratch. It required a lot of time just thinking through problems online debate could pose and then finding how to best address them.”

LAIMUN XXVI was the first virtual debate hosted by Costa’s MUN program. Many of the aspects of an in-person debate translated well to an online format, such as grading position papers and modes of communication. Other aspects of debate did not transition as smoothly, such as delivering speeches and having delegates collaborate in unmoderated caucuses. Costa chairs had to be trained to adapt to the online debate format and learn how to use Zoom features such as polling and breakout rooms. 

“Our USGs helped to train all the committee chairs to ensure they not only understood normal debate procedure, but were ready to deliver a seamless virtual experience as well,” Gerken said. “Overall our conference went very smoothly and we received positive feedback from all the MUN advisors.”

Over 140 Costa students participated in the debate. Over 70 sophomores, juniors and seniors worked as staff members who chaired the debate and members of the Secretariat who worked to organize and run LAIMUN. Around 70 Costa students debated at LAIMUN, many of them freshmen in the Intro to MUN class or are enrolled in it for the second semester of the school year. Buckley and Gerken also collaborated with other schools in order to ensure the debate ran smoothly. 

“Our staff worked closely with the SGs and USGs from the five other schools to share information about what virtual strategies worked well and what could be improved on for future conferences,” Gerken said. “All of these six local MUN programs have been working together to run a virtual circuit of conferences throughout the year, making sure delegates have a chance to maintain their skills even during a virtual environment.” 

During the conference, Chiefs of Staff and juniors Ben Henschel and Chloe Reinholtz ran virtual tours from Dec. 5 and 6 for 8th grade students and parents from Hermosa Valley Middle School and Manhattan Beach Middle School. The tours were an opportunity to introduce incoming freshmen to MUN and encourage them to enroll in the program. The tours consisted of a question and answer session and a self-guided tour to view debate rooms. 94 people signed up for the virtual information session and tour. 

“We adapted in a variety of ways in order to make the virtual tours run as smoothly as possible. We first created a virtual flyer that would be sent out to the MBMS and HVS 8th grade teachers,” Reinholtz said. “For the self guided tours, we created a document with both advanced and novice committee zoom links that were provided for parents and students to join. At the end of our presentation, the parents and students were required to change their names to ‘guest’ and turn their videos off when entering one of the committee rooms. They were also given 15 minutes to tour freely.” 

Costa will next attend Huntington Beach High School’s Surf City MUN conference in January. While all fall travel trips were canceled, Costa plans to attend virtual travel conferences Berkeley MUN, New York High School MUN and an international conference in the spring. 

“It was a LAIMUN unlike any other,” Gerken said. “Although we are all excited to hopefully be back in person next year, it was a great opportunity nonetheless.”