Photo courtesy of Kelly Miliziano
Steinbrenner's Model United Nations club visits Philadelphia for the national convention. Students represented different countries to discuss various issues.
On Jan. 25 to 28, Steinbrenner High School’s Model United Nations (UN) club traveled to Pennsylvania for the 34th Ivy League Model United Nations Conference (ILMUNC) at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Two people, most of the time, are representing a country. We were Zambia, and its harder to get people to listen to a country that they don’t know it well. Schools in the Northeast that specialize in Model UN sometimes get the bigger countries like America and Germany,” said club president and senior James Orchard.
Steinbrenner’s African Union (Zambia) delegates got both of their resolutions for the conference passed. They represented Zambia on the African Union committee. Junior Sadie Testa-Secca had been Zambia’s delegate before, and was comfortable with knowledge on the country.
“I know Steinbrenner has never won an award for the African Union, so it is really exciting we did. We also got both of our resolutions passed, and that is the ultimate goal of the simulation,” said Testa-Secca.
The topics of the conference, however, were electoral fraud and the crisis in the Western Sahara. Zambia’s resolutions to these issues were passed, even though due to a time limit the topic of the Western Sahara was abridged. However, there were many other committees involved in this conference. They included the Vietnamese Communist Party of 1986 and other committees that needed very specific knowledge.
“Some really interesting committees were the 2020 British Parliament and the 1986 Vietnamese Communist Party. The convention did a really good job at making the different committees unique to that specific conference,” said sophomore Jordyn Dees.
The conference that the club attended was international, with students from as far as Peru in attendance. Testa-Secca and Dees won against all of these members in order to get certificates for the category of Verbal, which is an award honoring the winner’s speeches and prowess in their resolutions.
Model UN may be attending the Arab Union next week, or a different conference later this year.
Sara Gofter // Staff Writer
