Phillips Academy’s Model United Nations Club brought home 29 awards and a first place win as “The Best Large Delegation” at the Boston University Model United Nations Conference (BosMUN) this past Saturday. BosMUN is an advanced Model United Nations conference that hosts over eighteen hundred students from around the world in thirty different delegations. Twenty-nine of the 37 Phillips Academy students who participated in BosMUN won awards. Kerry Lanzo ’11, Co-President of the Model United Nations Club, said she had not expected the team to win so many awards. Lanzo said, “It was more of a victory to me, I think just in how many awards we won, especially among the younger kids.” After winning best small delegation at BosMUN last year, the Model United Nations Club hoped to try to win a larger delegation prize this year. According to the BosMUN handbook, large delegation prizes were awarded to teams who had 16 or more delegates. BosMUN featured General Assembly committees, economic and social councils, specialized agencies and crisis committees for participants to wrestle with addressing world issues. Depending on their level, students were placed into different groups—General Assembly, Cabinet or Security Council—with the more novice members in a general assembly and more advanced members in specialized councils. Councils ranged from focusing on “the peaceful uses of outer space” to legislation of “Éire,” a small island off the coast of Ireland. To prepare for the conference, members of the club practiced drawing connections between different countries and improving their speeches. Laura Bucklin ’14, who participated in BosMUN, said, “Preparation was a little stressful because we didn’t know quite where we were coming in compared to the other kids, but at the end of the day it came down to whether or not you had a gut level understanding of the topic.” Zoë Chazen ’14 placed second out of a committee of 180 people. She said, “I was very proud of myself and I think that the first place girl deserved it. She was able to come up with one resolution putting together hers and mine into one.” One night during the conference, the team needed to wake up at 12 am to deal with a fictional last minute crisis. Jeremy Hutton ’11, Co-President of Model United Nations, said, “The midnight crisis was definitely the most fun.” This year’s conference was held at the Boston Park Plaza and because curfew was one am, the students felt they had some time to relax. “The second night a couple of my friends from Chinese class and I went out for Chinese food in Chinatown. It was really fun because we practiced ordering our food in Chinese” said MJ Engel ’13. Going forward, the Phillips Academy Model United Nations team is excited for their next conference in Spring Term. Lanzo said she hopes that the more novice club members will continue the team’s successful streak.
