By Ms. Marca Hoyle, EagleMUN Advisor
From January 23–25, the EagleMUN, Montverde Academy’s Model United Nations (UN) team, attended GatorMUN, a highly competitive Model UN conference at the University of Florida. Twenty-seven MVA delegates competed against 48 other schools (over 900 students!) in committees in the General Assembly, specialized, and crisis categories.
Model United Nations is a competitive academic program where students simulate international diplomacy. General Assembly is the traditional category where students represent different countries in United Nations committees. Delegates debate international issues, form blocs to write resolutions, and present their resolutions to convince other countries to vote for them. Specialized and crisis categories provide additional challenges as students must apply diplomacy to political organizations beyond the United Nations, historical events, and even fictional scenarios.
EagleMUN delegates Jacob Novis and Julianna Barbieri both won awards for their performance in Press Corps:
· Jacob Novis won Best Delegate (first place) for his representation of Little Saigon.
· Julianna Barbieri won Honorable Mention for her representation of the Buenos Aires Herald.
Press Corps is a unique specialized committee where delegates represent international news outlets. After dealing with a crisis scenario relating to international journalism, the delegates were then assigned other committees to report on while authentically representing their news outlet.
Below is a full list of MVA delegates who participated in GatorMUN:
Crisis Delegates:
1. Andrew Borne (East Asia Crisis – Park Ji Won)
2. Isabella Salgado (East Asia Crisis – Yamamoto Ren)
3. Charles Dumay (East Asia Crisis – Gao Xinyi)
4. Elissa Ghanem (Ad Hoc Crisis – Position 29)
5. Camelia Berrada (Ad Hoc Crisis – Position 30)
Specialized Delegates:
6. Jacob Novis (Press Corps – Little Saigon)
7. Julianna Barbieri (Press Corps – Buenos Aires Herald)
8. Kinsley Sayer (African Union – Angola)
9. Carington Helms (African Union – Boswana)
General Assembly Delegates:
10. Noor Cheema (UN Office of Drugs & Crime – Jordan)
