aggienaut | 07 of 30 - UNA-USA "PRIMUN" 2008 (Reply)

   Just got back from the UNA-USA (high school) MUN conference. I have never ever ever in my history of MUNing seen a committee as mind-bogglingly apathetic as the committee I chaired this weekend. From the beginning there were only two or three people making speeches or active during caucuses, while everyone else sat around. Only these people wrote resolutions, while everyone else sat around. We finished the first topic early because no one was arguing about it (women in employment). The second topic (child labour) they were even more apathetic about, with only one delegation trying to take it seriously and even they gave up shortly after realizing no one else was going to budge. Part of the reason may have been that committee only had two more hours to go so they didn't think they'd be able to finish .. but working on it in the mean time is a while lot better than the alternative of sitting around staring at eachother for two hours ... which is what they mostly ended up doing.
   I tried to have them vote for a rappateur (an award thats really only defined as the person the committee wants to vote as the rappateur .. sometimes its a very good delegate, but just as frequently they give it to someone who hardly ever spoke as a joke) but only two people voted ... each for themself! We tried to do joke awards, but no one would nominate anyone for anything.
   It was seriously so tediuous. Getting them to talk was like pulling teeth. I think the problem must have been that at any other conference I've ever been to the delegates were there voluntarily .. whereas here I think their teachers had just thrown them in. Some delegates had travelled from Korea of Hong Kong for the conference -- I felt really bad for them.

   Hanging out with staff was fun though. I get there and find out that there's SIX of us there that went to school together at MVHS. A real testement to the MUN powerhouse we were. I was the only person from UC Davis so they put me with the large contingent of people from UC Berkeley, and man did they know how to party. Both nights people were up until at least 5am.
   One of their friends drove to visit (from Santa Barbara five hours away?!) and brought with him three Danish girls (he was also Danish). One was his sister, she dragged one of our staffers into his room in the end of the evening; one passed out relatively early, in the room where most of the partying was going on; and the third was lesbian, apparently, and quickly became fixated on one of our girls who wanted nothing to do with her. She was quite creepily obsessed.
   But yeah, so, there were many interesting adventures.

   And now, since I got three hours of sleep last night, I'm going to bed.