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By Rama K. Ramaswamy
Dana Hall’s Model United Nations team recently traveled to New York City to compete in Columbia University's annual Model UN conference. The competition hosted more than 700 delegates from 53 schools from around the world.
Dana Hall students competed in 16 hours of debate and earned the Outstanding Large School Delegation Award (second place). This award recognizes the collective efforts of Dana Hall’s delegates, including their success in public speaking, response to crises, diplomacy, research and collaboration. In addition, Dana Hall’s team won individual awards in 11 of their 19 committees.
Social Studies teacher and Model UN coach Heather Panahi said, “One of the great things about the Columbia Model UN program is that many of their committee rooms are historically based so many of the rooms/sessions we participated in were simulations of actual historic events. Some of the rooms we competed in included the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, the Argentinian Provisional Cabinet of 1943 and the League at Frankfurt-1810.
“There are also present-day rooms, which require the delegates to try and address real-world issues. For example, this year, one of my students, Elizabeth Fulham, participated in a simulation of the Democratic National Committee and its selection of the 2016 presidential candidate.”
At Columbia MUN, also known as CMUNCE, each school may only have one delegate per committee. The goal of this is to ensure that true collaboration, negotiation and diplomacy happens. In addition, all rooms are crisis-driven. In other words, the staff at Columbia creates crises in the midst of debate, forcing student delegates to think critically and work collaboratively to address unexpected road bumps or challenges.
“This competition is one of our biggest,” Panahi said. “This year, Columbia hosted students even from Honduras, Canada and Jordan. Over a period of three and a half days, students competed in a wide range of committees, from historical to contemporary, realistic to the fantastical.”
After 16.5 hours of intense debate Dana Hall won individual awards in 11 of their 19 committees, including four fourth place awards (Deena Husami, Emily Fenn-Smith, Spencer Babcock and Maddie Rivers), a 3rd place award (Laura Minardi) and five first place awards (Jackie Hayre-Perez, Corky Ribakoff, Nina Kosowsky, Meaghan Robichaud and Hilary Present).
Most impressive is that the Dana Hall team earned the Outstanding Large School Delegation award or second place overall and most don’t know that the team award is the highest honor, as it recognizes the collective efforts of all of a school's delegates, with particular emphasis on poise and public speaking, interaction with and response to crises, diplomacy, research and cooperation/collaboration with other delegates.
“As I tell my girls often, individual awards are great, but when you are recognized as a team, you're doing something right,” Panahi said. “It is a privilege to coach such strong, young women. They are true leaders in every sense of the word, and remind me daily how lucky the world will be to have them when they finally take the reins.”
Dana Hall’s next conference is February 26-28, when they will travel to Dartmouth College.
Rama K. Ramaswamy writes for Hometown Weekly. She can be reached at [email protected].
