CBA Model UN Celebrates 10th Annual Middle School Conference
On Friday, December 2, 2022, Christian Brothers Academy hosted the 10th annual Middle Model United Nations (MiddleMUN) Conference for more than 200 middle schoolers across the Monmouth County area.
For the middle schoolers, the conference started at 2:30 p.m., but for many of the chairs and others involved, the physical set-up began at 8:30 in the morning. With dozens of staff members and other people helping out, everything was able to be done on time, but it would not be possible without everyone’s hard work.
MiddleMUN is CBA’s Model UN club’s big event for the year, which means that the students in MiddleMUN could determine their position in the club in the following year based on their performance at the conference. The performance in this could also impact if certain students are assets to go on trips with the club, which added even greater stakes for students who may have been on the cusp. As for others, they were helping out so they could help middle schoolers enjoy their own Model UN conference.
Set-up concluded by 2:30 p.m. and the conference officially commenced. With the staff, rapporteurs, and chairs, everyone headed to their committees, each varying in size depending on the topic with the most current, up-to-date committees being the most popular.
For the three hours between 2:30 p.m. and our dinner at 5:30, committees were working diligently to create their own solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems (and some fun situations too).
Dinner for everyone was a sub. Doctor Gustavsen made sure that everyone received one. Shortly after about 6 p.m, the second part of the session began from 6:30 until 8:00. At this point, the committees all worked together to finalize their resolutions.
From 8:00 until 8:30, the chairs and some staff went to the theater to watch the awards ceremony, where the best of the best from these committees were recognized for their efforts. While that was being done, many of the rapporteurs and staff were cleaning up.
Once they were done, they all went to the theater to watch as well. After the awards ceremony was over, there was still quite a bit of cleaning up to do, which lasted from about 8:30 until 9:30.
This was our first MiddleMUN back post-pandemic and masks, so for everyone other than the seniors and Dr. Gustavsen, this was completely uncharted territory. Overall, everyone handled it very well. It gave me a lot of hope for the future of the club, as many of the underclassmen seemed ready for the challenge going into the conference. As for the juniors who will be the leaders of the conference next year, everyone did their jobs diligently and had shown that they are ready for the next MiddleMUN. As for the trips in the future to Boston and Washington D.C, everyone who will be attending acted very maturely throughout the entire conference, so I have no doubt those trips will be a success, too.
