High schoolers play politics at annual Model UN Conference

Over 1,300 high school students from across the United States gathered in Philadelphia this weekend to discuss economic development, world health and the environment as part of the University's 13th-annual Ivy League Model United Nations Conference. The conference -- hosted by the University's International Affairs Association -- lasted Thursday through Sunday in the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel. The conference drew more participants than any previous ILMUNC, placing Penn alongside Harvard and Georgetown as host of one of the three largest model UN conferences in the nation. The annual conference is organized and run entirely by Penn students. Conferences such as ILMUNC simulate the workings of the real UN and give high school students an inside look at the proceedings and policies of the international affairs organization. And while this year's conference participants came from as far away as California and Michigan to learn first-hand about international policy-making, they also used the event to learn about the University. Conference organizers seized the opportunity of having some of the nation's brightest high school students in one hotel by working with the University's Admissions Office to create the Penn Program. Throughout the weekend, University students distributed admissions information and conducted campus tours for the participants. "[The conference] was absolutely a great promo for the school," said College junior Ned Nurick, an ILMUNC staff member. A new Distinguished Scholars Program also brought several prominent University professors to the conference to address the participants on various issues of international world order. "The kids loved them," College sophomore Melissa James said. "I think some of the professors may have convinced them to apply to Penn." James -- who interacted with many of the young delegates in the sessions she chaired -- also noted that Penn's crime problems were not on anyone's mind that weekend. The participants she spoke with said they loved the campus, the atmosphere and being in a city. "The students didn't seem to know about the crime problem," James said. "It is known that in a big city there will be crime. None of the people who talked about wanting to go to Penn seemed to care about crime as an issue at all." Members of the International Affairs Association said they hope many of the young delegates will one day end up at Penn and in the Association. Engineering and Wharton senior Saikat Chaudhuri, chief of staff for the conference, said overall the participants had a "sincere interest" in international relations. "They are part of a group that does not just believe in the news anymore," Chaudhuri said. "They want to know how things actually work." Each high school taking part in the conference is assigned a country several months beforehand and each student acts as a delegate of that country. Those students are then responsible for researching the current issues of their given country so they are prepared to defend their stance on issues at the conference. As in the real UN, the conference is divided into several issue-based committees, each of which produces resolutions written, negotiated and passed by the delegates. The committees focus on such topics as economics and justice. The event's staff of 165 Penn students -- which ran the conference and chaired the committees -- was led by a Secretariat comprised of College juniors Jamie Hine, Vicki Hooper and Chaudhuri. James and College juniors Shalini Ramasunder, Robin Kawakami, Jennifer Taylor and Allan Alicuben also held positions resembling those of the real UN Secretariat. Members of the International Affairs Association could relate to the enthusiasm and accomplishments of the ILMUNC participants. Penn's ILMUNC was rated Top Model UN Conference in 1996 by the faculty advisors of the high schools involved -- and sends an award-winning delegation to college-level Model UN conferences across the world itself. The University's delegation has won the title of Best Delegation in most of the conferences it attended in recent years, according to Chaudhuri, and last spring it beat out the world's best universities at an international conference held in Amsterdam.