Nearly 260 students from 17 different schools attended MASMUNC, the single-day annual Model UN conference hosted by The Masters School Model UN team, on Saturday, Dec. 6. The conference offered 11 different committees for high school or middle school students to join.

Planning for MASMUNC begins in May, when the club begins brainstorming ideas and forming the teams for each committee. The chairs of each committee are typically rising sophomores, juniors or seniors, who continue planning and preparing for MASMUNC over the summer.

The committees at MASMUNC focused on various topics, such as the Hunger Games, Severance, the Salem Witch Trials, the World Trade Organization and the Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC). Committees such as DISEC gave delegates an opportunity to discuss real-world issues and topics, like human regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Individuals in DISEC questioned the value in compromising the safety of individuals in favor of efficiency in technology, debated the use of AI in warfare and human supervision over autonomous weapons. 

Middle School and Upper School Latin and History Teacher Benjamin Thorn said the MUN team has plans to attend more Model UN conferences throughout the year, such as Naimun LXIII, the Georgetown Model UN conference held during President’s Day weekend in Washington, DC. Thorn has replaced Brittany Farrar as the faculty advisor of the MUN team while she is on maternity leave. 

Although this is his first year organizing MASMUNC, it is Thorn’s third year assisting with the Masters MUN team. He said he has received a lot of support from the dedicated secretariat of the club: Neena Atkins, Sebastian Simkin and Noah Adler. 

Adler, the secretary of the Masters MUN team and one of the director generals of MASMUNC, said he hopes delegates will develop leadership and responsibility at the conference. 

“[MASMUNC is] really about leadership and understanding how we can best listen and hear what people are saying and really just focusing on helping people learn,” he said. 

In addition to the secretariat and the chairs of each committee, the backroom staff also help run the conference, specifically crisis committees. Individuals in the backroom work behind-the-scenes to write crisis notes and live updates for committees during the conference. 

Arthur Burkhardt ’28 and Drew Lopez ‘27 worked as the backroom staff for the Ad Hoc committee, an MUN committee in which delegates are not informed about the topic before the conference, forcing individuals to improvise and think quickly during the session. The Ad Hoc committee at MASMUNC was tasked with dealing with a murder mystery. Each person played a character responding to the crime scene. Individuals had to make decisions on interrogating suspects, choosing to call the police, increasing security, informing the parents of the victims, contacting medical professionals and other aspects of storybuilding. 

It is both Burkhardt and Lopez’s first year on the Masters MUN team. Burkhardt said he wants to learn more about MUN and how the behind-the-scenes works during the conference, since it is his first time not having the role of a delegate. Lopez said he chose to participate in the conference to have fun and enjoy working with others in the backroom. 

“I hope people enjoy [MASMUNC] and have some fun. I feel like people want to come to this conference, [and then] they want to go again,” Burkhardt said. 

“We want people to think [of] MASMUNC [as] the fun conference,” Lopez said. 

Every student at Masters is welcome to participate as a delegate in MASMUNC. Thorn said the Masters MUN team tries to encourage people to join the club by talking with students during the club fair, presenting at Morning Meeting and teaching students about MUN in the Middle School. He said he believes students can develop important skills through MUN and MASMUNC.

“I think the students [will learn] really valuable skills – skills that are not always at the forefront of an academic education – skills of collaboration, thinking on their feet, public speaking and compromise: when to push, when to accept and [how to] work with others.”