A regionally respected MUN team continues its ambitious journey

The question of what MUN really entails remains a mystery to many. The number one premise to be established is that MUN is not purely academic-based. In a conference, delegates of all schools will first engage in a period of socialization referred to as “caucusing time”, in which delegates form groups, get acquainted with each other, and draft their collective resolutions on solving specific international crises.

Ensuing caucusing time is a long duration of speech and debate, where delegates debate upon and revise the resolutions drafted earlier. This is the part where delegates find the most thrilling and also the most challenging, and where we apply what we learned in our weekly training sessions. Delegates will steer through all the nuances and find the solution that will both effectively neutralize the crisis and set policies that will fulfill their distinctive national interests. This is also the part where SMIC students will prove themselves as active global citizens and reflect their skill and sportsmanship.

The question is, what exactly about these procedures is so fun that delegates would willingly spend tens of hours doing research which culminates in fifty pages of materials? I believe this can be indirectly answered as I review the development plan, the five-year plan, that our MUN director Mr. Scott Sanders mapped out for us.

The five-year plan began when Mr. Sanders stepped in as the club director three years ago, and over the course of the next five years, his team has gone, and will go, through the local, regional, and eventual international milestone. “SMIC’s MUN team had gone through the phase of locally acclaimed, is accomplishing the stage of regionally respected, and will soon be entering the final stage of globally recognized,” said Mr. Sanders.

Up until last year, our team was still not recognized by the local community. The conference held by our school wasn’t attended by many, and our performances in other schools’ conferences weren’t as notable either. Yet officers and directors of the club put in their utmost efforts to improve and expand the club.

The progress became more noticeable one and half years ago when Kate Lee (’17) served as the club President and Vivien Su (’17) worked as a Secretary-General for our conference SMICMUN III. Vivien spent months organizing SMICMUN III—from handling macro things like processing forms by directors of other schools to dealing with more detailed things such as finding the right amount of supplies to order for the conference. That year, all the hard work paid off. Eighty students from international schools all over Shanghai came to our conference. As a member of the SMIC community, it was truly encouraging to see how the SMIC Private School is viewed with esteem and acclaim by other schools of Shanghai.

Also, the year 2016-2017 showcased a drastic improvement in the quality of our own delegates.  Our team worked tirelessly to make the name of our school regionally respected. For instance, the three Best Delegate Awards and an Honorable Mention from MUNiSC, an international conference hosted in Qingdao, are together a product of many dedicated hours into preparation for the conference.

This year, Secretary-General Brian Ge (12B), along with the rest of the secretariats and the officers, began the preparation process during summer vacation. As the number of delegates participating skyrocketed this year, the preparation process became a lot more intensive. Fortunately, under the leadership of Brian Ge and Mr. Sanders, we managed to create a good conference environment for the 110 elite delegates selected out of over 150 applicants from all the international schools in Shanghai.

In the present year of SMICMUN IV, president Jessica Choi (12B) is already striving towards the ambitious goal of global recognition. “This year, we have been working on training our members into world-class delegates. We now have a YouTube tutorial, leadership committee, and designing committee who are a great help to the executive team,” Jessica responded when asked about the new reforms of our MUN team. The path to global recognition is indeed tough, but the officers have created more advanced training sessions, with important contributions from MUN members as well. Indeed, just in the span of one semester, our members received 8 Best Delegate Awards, 1 Most Diplomatic Award, and 2 Most Improved Delegate Awards. Moreover, our team was able to send 16 members as student officers, 2 members as a judge and an attorney for CISSMUN’s International Criminal Court committee this semester. It is during moments like this when all of us SMIC students feel an extremely heightened sense of self-accomplishment to see our school achieve the phase of being regionally respected.

Most importantly, the biggest accomplishment of this year was the bond formed among highly trained officers, veteran delegates, and newer members of the club. “The older and more experienced members seem more than happy to help us out, and even when they were undoubtedly very busy with their own work they took time to help us check our work and correct our mistakes,” commented ShuRui Lai (9A), a freshman and a new member this year. Through such collaboration, MUN is evolving from a big club to an increasingly interconnected family.

Two distinguished delegates are Yuhan Chen (10A) and Cindy Huang (11B), who have both individually partaken in conferences outside our usual conference list. Just earlier this December, Yuhan Chen participated in OXMUN (Oxford MUN), a major conference held at Shanghai Foreign Language School (SFLS). In the same week that Yuhan Chen received outstanding award in OXMUN, Cindy decided to use her scholarship from National Taiwan University to fund her Taiwan journey and gain PAMUN (Pan Asia MUN) experience with other delegates across the Asian continent. “I came into contact with a variety of people who I normally wouldn’t have known,” expressed Cindy Huang passionately. Needless to say, Yuhan and Cindy’s participation in the two conferences definitely pushed SMIC-I one step closer to the next milestone of the Five Year Plan.

However, we are still on our journey to achieving complete regional fame and global recognition—making our MUN program stronger and more influential for years to come.

Featured Image – Sydney Lin and Percy Jang served as student officers of NAISMUN Photo courtesy of Percy Jang