[ccfic caption-text format="plaintext"]
By Douglas McCulloch
Hometown Weekly Staff
A group of Westwood High students have been busy solving international crises, preventing wars and fighting climate change, among other projects through Westwood High’s Model UN club.
Model UN aims to provide its members with immersive simulations of global politics. Traditionally, the simulations have students taking on the roles of various actors in complex international political, economic and security issues to negotiate and work with their peers for a positive outcome.
“Their job is to come up with solutions to solve problems,” said Model UN advisor Christopher Hilton. “They have to ask ‘what would be a realistic solution to this problem?’”
Now in its fourth year at Westwood High, the club has 35 members. Members of Westwood High’s Model UN club meet at various conferences held every year with clubs from across the country. If the school is accepted into a conference, the students who are picked to represent Westwood High usually receive an overview of the simulation topics and their assigned roles about a month before the conference begins.
The roles students are assigned depends the most on the topic of the conference, which could cover literally anything, from, geopolitical tension in Eastern Europe, terrorism and security, to economic development to the threat of global warming.
Their roles tend to cover every aspect of the issue being discussed. Once students have their roles, they spend weeks researching every side of the issue, and their own roles.
“The kids try to find out all the relevant information they can,” Hilton said. He noted students have to both understand the topics, and how their assigned roles would react to the topics at hand.
Once the simulation begins, the students find themselves in a room face-to-face with students representing opposing sides of their issue. Through careful and formal debate and political maneuvering, the students battle to move the room to their side.
“It’s a very formal debate,” Hilton said. “You have to operate within the confines of parliamentary procedure.”
Over the years, Hilton noted that Model UN has picked up a loyal and growing following. Many of the students in Westwood High’s club have been participating in the club for several years, and spots at the larger and more popular conferences are increasingly becoming more difficult to secure.
“Model UN has gone through a revival,” Hilton said. “There is a very high demand for spots [at conferences].”
This year, the club has participated in smaller conferences at St. John’s Prep and Brown University. Members also celebrated the 70th anniversary of the United Nations by hosting a United Nations Day Symposium at Fox Hill Village.
The club recently traveled to Boston College to participate in its annual Model UN conference, a three-day event attended by over 650 students from across the country.
Students from Westwood High participated in several themed simulations covering both modern and historical topics centered around global security. While some students served in the United Nations General Assembly, Interpol and UNESCO, other students recounted the Peloponnesian Wars through committee assignments on the Delian League of Athens and Persia.
During the Boston College conference, Westwood High senior and Model UN Vice President Michael Tian served as a member of the Japanese government during the 1850s and argued against European imperialism. It was Tian’s favorite event this year, and he noted that each Model UN event teaches him valuable lessons about world politics.
“The most important thing that I have learned is that diplomacy and compromise are hard,” Tian said. “We often are angry that our government seemingly does nothing, and that anger is usually valid. However, being in some of these situations firsthand allowed me to see how frustrating it can be when people refuse to compromise.”
For this year, the BU conference was the Model UN club’s final big event of the year, but Hilton is already looking forward to next year, and is hoping to apply to conferences at Columbia and Dartmouth College.
