Every year, City High’s Model UN club begins organization in the fall and later on, after spring break, begins weekly meetings to help prepare for the annual UNI Spring Conference.  The spring UNI conference was held at the University of Northern Iowa campus.

 Dodge describes what model UN does for students.

“Seeing students get interested in global issues and seeing many carry that interest on with world travel and working to help move the world to productive discussions on issues facing us today,” Mr. Dodge, the head of Model UN said.

During weekly meetings, the club talks about a variety of issues as well as prepares position papers that get students to research their assigned country and positions on issues that will be used in their committees. 

“Model UN provides students with practice at working with Robert’s Rules of Order and building support for one’s positions while gaining a greater understanding of the world around us,” Dodge said.

This year the club did a mini Zoom conference with just City High students to create resolutions on how the world should address pandemics and climate change. This provided practice to learn how the UNI online conference works. 

“I certainly hope we will be back to doing in-person group things in Model UN next year,” Dodge said. 

The conference involved schools in and around Iowa and is meant to create a large-scale simulation of the actual United Nations General Assembly and other major UN committees. The students come up with topics for different committees that are in the news and impacting countries around the world. This year the conference was conducted online over Zoom and as a result of the online version, there was a lower attendance rate. 

 “It is not as exciting to do the debate and politicking needed to write UN Resolutions over Zoom,” Dodge said. “[However], when you consider the constraints that an online conference has I think things worked out quite well.”

Also, this year both Reyan Roach ‘24 and Raven Levitt ‘22 received the Outstanding Delegate Awards.

“This is a great honor for them and recognition of their passion and research on their topics and countries. With the group we have returning for next year I hope we will get to go to an in-person conference and have even more Outstanding Delegates,” Dodge said.