The chair of the General Assembly got out of his seat and walked behind the table, stepped off the stage, and walked out the door. Two students ran up and placed both a loaf of bread and a bottle of Dasani water at his seat in accordance with the passed Amendment A15.

“I loved the joke amendments at the end,” Harper Denniston ‘21 said. “So basically, when we had finished and didn’t have anything else to do, people could just write a funny amendment and put on and discuss them, and there were some pretty hilarious ones.”

Along with Amendment A15, several joke amendments were added to the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural (SH&C) Resolution on Crimes Concerning Humanitarian Aid after the General Assembly passed both the SH&C Resolution regarding Human Trafficking and Forced Labor and Political and Security Resolution regarding Right of Return for Refugees. The rest of the 2019 Spring Model UN conference was full of surprises, especially for the nine City High students who attended. Not one of them had ever gone before.

“I didn’t really know what to expect,” Denniston said. “I knew that you could…just observe if you wanted to, but other than that I really had no idea what would be going down.”

Last year, every single student who was in Model UN graduated from City High, leaving coach Steve Dodge with a lot of new and unprepared students.

“It always kind of goes in cycles; we had a strong group that graduated last year, and a lot of them have gone on to pursue academics in public policy and areas connected to Model UN,” Dodge said. “I think it’s a valuable activity, and then many students find something they want to do as a career from doing it.”

Model UN, or Model United Nations, is a club at City High where students put themselves in the shoes of real UN delegates. They represent a country at a conference which is usually held by a college or high school Model UN club.

“My main goal is to get people there the first time, because I think once you get there, you’re going to want to come back,” Dodge said. “The difficulty…is trying to get people to understand what’s going to happen, and a lot of that you just got to get from experience.”

Of the nine students who went, all who aren’t graduating are planning to go back to the conference next year.

“Everyone…is going be accepting of you because there’s going to be all kinds of new people, they’re just starting out and then you’ll be that much more experienced to take on a bigger role in the future and to get involved in other activities,” Dodge said.

At the conference, delegates of countries get to vote on amendments and write their own during the caucus. Caucuses are where the delegates have time to write amendments and  

“[My favorite part was] interacting with the other schools from our state, and also being able to meet underclassmen of our school because I never have an opportunity to meet any of the underclassmen,” Magdalena Bialk ‘19 said.

Dodge recommends that any students interested in global social, humanitarian, political, or trade policies join the club.

“Don’t be worried. You got to overcome that fear of newness of trying something new,” Dodge said. “Just go out and take the risk.”