Early Wednesday morning, four freshman, three sophomores, and eight junior Model United Nations (MUN) delegates from Parker, accompanied by Upper School MUN director Jeanne Barr, said goodbye to Chicago and, after a four hour trip, touched down in Vancouver, British Columbia. For the next six days, they explored the Canadian city and took part in the yearly conference ConnectMUN.  They returned late Monday night.

For the past decade, Upper School MUN has organized two trips per year to conferences, one North American, and one international. This year, it was decided those two conferences were to be held in Vancouver and in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“Travelling to these conferences gives kids a truly global experience in a unique way,” Barr said. “where you’re meeting kids from another place and you have a common interest and a common goal in why you’re there.”

Following a day of travel and getting settled in at the Hyatt regency Hotel, also where the conference was held, the delegates had the opportunity to take a 16 mile bike ride through the city, learning about Vancouver and hearing some of its many stories. In addition, they went to a First Nations restaurant (owned and operated by Native Americans, who prefer the term “First Nations”) where they ate food like bison ribs and elk soup, all purchased locally from First Nations vendors. And lastly they visited a nature preserve to traverse the Capilano Suspension Bridge, which spans a 1,000-ft deep canyon. Soon after that, ConnectMUN began.

Over the course of 48 hours, the delegates debated their country’s stance on a given issue, writing working papers and passing resolutions until the Closing Ceremony.

“We were the only school from the United States, and we had come the farthest of any delegation,” said Barr. “This conference attracts people from the region, so they were very excited that we were here, and I got a lot of questions from the organizers about how we found out about them, and what they could do to attract more international delegations to grow their conference.”

Varying from the UN Women Committee, deliberating on the Counteracting of Rape Culture, to the Commonwealth committee, deliberating on the food security and access to water, Parker delegates took part in their own six conference sessions including a crisis committee where delegates were waken up at midnight to further work on their issue. In the end, awards were announced and two Parker delegates came back with a gavel and medal. Sammy Kagan won “Best Delegate” in the Legal committee, along with Felix Wood who won “Honorable Mention” in the Commonwealth committee.

Speaking on his award, Kagan said, “I think the stuff we do at Parker prepares us really well for these outside conferences; so the in-house symposia, the public speaking, the writing the papers really gets you ready for when stuff like this (ConnectMUN) comes around.”

Weeks before the conference, delegates worked hard to be well prepared to participate in ConnectMUN. This involved a series of mandatory symposia, workshops, papers, and Thursday U-lunch meetings, as well as a great deal of research and homework outside of school. As stated in the application terms, students had to “agree to prioritize attendance at these meetings… and recognize that their absence, lateness, or lack of preparedness may jeopardize their good standing.” If certain requirements are not met, the delegate is simply uninvited and replaced, which did not happen during the lead up to this conference.

Delegates are chosen based on an application process in which Barr looks at prior experience, commitment, and skill. Once invited, each student must pay $2,200, unless he or she actively receives financial aid. And while the ability to pay is entirely separate from the selection process, the amount of aid is not unlimited–individual aid awards depend on the total number of aid recipients.

In the past, students on financial aid were eligible to go on only one school trip throughout all four years of high school. That included any type of trip, whether in foreign language or MUN. That rule was amended to allow one trip maximum per year. Nonetheless, it can still be challenging for students to go on MUN trips if they’re on financial aid or if their family already struggles with tuition.

“There are families that are finding payment of tuition stressful,” Director of Financial Aid Karen Fisher said. “And so to have any extra costs like a trip could be a hardship on them because it’s obvious that families don’t come in to the financial aid program unless they have a pretty significant need. This mindset precludes them from participating in all the great opportunities that are here.”

MUN captain Joshua Kaufman accepts the facts of the situation.  “The reality is that the school doesn’t have infinite resources,” Kaufman said.  “Financial aid dollars going from one source to the other can be very difficult to deal with.”

MUN trips also pose a challenge to some families that pay full tuition but don’t have enough wealth to afford expensive extracurriculars such as school trips.

“For a lot of people that don’t qualify for financial aid,” MUN captain Charlie Moog said, “it’s still a lot of money for these trips, which to pay out of the pocket can often times be challenging for some families to pay.”

In Kaufman’s view, students who participate in MUN feel pressure to attend these conferences.   “Being involved in Model UN,” he said, “you’ll feel weird if you’re obviously really good, but you just can’t afford to go.”

Ideally no one would pay anything for MUN trips, according to Barr, and the cost would be “absorbed by the school.”  “What I worry about is for kids who are well aware that their parents are under financial pressure,” Barr added, “and they hear about these cool opportunities, but they don’t seek getting into them because they know how much their parents are already sacrificing in order to be at the school.”

While it would be nearly impossible for the school to absorb all the cost of these trips, as there isn’t enough money in the financial aid office, and raising tuition for all students could be problematic, Barr brought up the possibility of MUN creating its own fundraiser to get its own source of resources so all students can equally participate.

In addressing this potential solution, Fisher said, “I would be concerned that if there were a lot of individual efforts to fundraise that it could take away from the larger strategic initiatives and goals that the school has.”