Samo Students win award at first Model UN conference of the year

Heather Knight / Contributor 

Model UN is a club at Samo, where students can simulate being delegates from a country. The club is stretched over ten committees, each with its own two issues that students would discuss and work with other delegates to get their ideas passed by the committe. 

On Nov. 9 and 10, Model United Nations (known as Model UN) had its first conference of the 2024 school year. 

This conference was led by the UCLA Model United Nations team and held 2,000 students— from both in and out of state— in around 30 committees. Model UN is a club at Samo where students can simulate being delegates from a country and participate in conferences to meet and discuss with Model UN branches from other schools. 

During the conference, students would win different kinds of awards, such as honorable mentions, commendations, outstanding delegates and best delegates. Athena Miller (’27) and Lily McGrath (’27) won an award for their research paper on combating deforestation and food insecurity in Latin America. Miller expressed how she and McGrath made their paper and how it felt to win the award. 

“When writing the research paper we looked into current innovations and technology used to combat the existing issues so we could build onto those ideas,” Miller said. “We also researched past UN involvement in deforestation and food and nutrition insecurity…We were shocked when we won the research award because it was an exceptionally large conference and so many students worked hard in preparation for it.” 

Many of the club's members—up to 75% of them—were new, with this being their first-ever conference, as the majority of the club graduated last year. But not only have many new seats been filled, the influx of new students has led to a large increase in participation and attendance. To prepare the new students for how conferences would work, the club provided mock conferences and paper outlines. Heather Knight, the club advisor, describes how the new students have changed with a conference under their belt. 

“We have all these new little kids coming in,” Knight said. “Their first conference… They now know what’s expected of them at a Model UN conference. So in that regard, I think it went great and now they’re gonna be in a position to understand.” 

In early Oct., they were given world issues such as disaster risk reduction, regulation for digital labor, labor rights of children and more. During the conference, the club was stretched over ten committees, each with two issues to be discussed and problem-solved. Once given their issue, students would choose a country, such as Cambodia, Nicaragua, Bangladesh, Singapore and others. The students then came up with proposals from the perspective of said nation. All the research was then put into a paper due Oct 25 – a three-week deadline from when they first got their issue. Miller describes the experience of working and speaking at the conference.

“Since BruinMUN is such a large conference, we learned that we need to advocate for ourselves and be confident so our ideas can be heard,” Miller said. “We realized that it was unlikely we were ever going to see any of the other delegates again, so we should give it our all even if we embarrassed ourselves. This experience really taught us that it’s more important to have fun at these conferences instead of becoming overly set on an agenda because you end up being more confident.” 

While there are no Model UN conferences this semester, the club is said to have one every month in the spring— one in January, February and possibly March. Knight said the workload that the students deal with each time they attend a conference.  

“I think it’s definitely hard to give up two full days on a weekend…” Knight said. “So I know that these kids recognize the sacrifice that is involved in running a program like this and we have to do all the fundraising ourselves and there’s not a whole bunch of support. It’s very much voluntary and from the heart.” 

As the club continues to grow, they plan on hosting their conference at Samo during the spring. Miller said it’s reinvigorating to see how people are gaining more interest in Model UN and its leadership. 

“We mainly chose to do Model UN to improve our writing and public speaking skills,” Miller said. “It has additionally been extremely fun hanging out with friends and Mrs. Knight during club meetings and conferences. The club is unlike anything we’ve ever been a part of and it has brought us out of our comfort zones while also being a place to make friends.”