This February, 450 students from 50 religious high schools across the country will convene in Stamford, Connecticut for the 26th annual Yeshiva University National Model United Nations (YUNMUN). From Sunday through Tuesday the high schoolers, who will each be assigned to a delegation chaired by three YU students, will attend a General Assembly at which they will debate the best method of tackling the issues their delegation is up against. The ultimate goal for each delegation, says Danielle Orenshein, a senior double majoring in Political Science and Business Intelligence and Marketing Analytics, and the YUNMUN Secretary-General, is for the delegates to pass a resolution amongst themselves.
Preparation for the event is well underway already, with applicants flooding in. For Orenshein, the high number of applicants and small number of available positions is tough, but also exciting.
“It’s cool to see how people jump at the opportunity to join in,” she said.
While she isn’t involved with selecting the high schoolers who will make up the delegations, it is her charge to ensure that the committees, and the three college students who will run each one, are in the best shape possible come February twenty-first. That means selecting students who are passionate and excited to throw themselves into the work.
And it’s not only Political Science majors – Orenshein says that a new committee, The Commission on Science and Technology for Development, was formed at the behest of three undersecretaries, all of whom are biology majors, and wanted to see their field of study represented. YUNMUN is for everyone who enjoys “thought provoking, intellectual debates,” said Orenshein, regardless of their major.
While this is model UN, it should by no means be thought of as small time. The three day conference is one that the students – both high school and college level – will have spent several months preparing for. Business attire is required, and each delegation chair will choose one standout delegate as the recipient of the ‘Best Delegate’ award to be handed out at the Tuesday morning award ceremony.
The students will also have spent time working on a position paper, which they will present ahead of time to be submitted online, giving them and everyone else the chance to see how delegation members of other countries are proposing to solve the issue set to them.
While all this groundwork is a necessity, the delegates will also be expected to learn how to adapt and think quickly. Orenshein said that each delegation chair announces a “breakdown crisis” at some point during the conference – a crisis that the students have not expected or prepared for.
Orenshein added that these crises aren’t merely announced: for some delegations, a chair runs into a room with a dramatic announcement, others learn via an email, and still others – usually the Security Council, a highly coveted delegation – are woken during the night to be told of an imminent threat to global security which they must deal with immediately. It’s up to the team heading each delegation, says Orenshein, to decide precisely what the crisis will be, and how and when they will inform their delegates of it.
Orenshein said that the bulk of her role as Secretary General takes place in the months leading up to the conference itself. She, as well as her three undersecretaries Racheli Weil, Tzvi Levitin, and Avi Strauss, will help each delegation prepare for the General Assembly to come. Once they arrive in Stamford, Orenshein says she will be on hand to troubleshoot if need be, but that the student teams heading each delegation will take the reigns.
Orenshein added that positions for the Junior staff and media center are still open. Joining YUNMUN is a chance, she said, to join a special “community within the school,” learn a great deal, and meet like-minded people from across the country.