As the fall months come and go, and multicolored leaves are replaced with heaps of snow, it’s clear that a new season is underway. The late months of autumn are filled with talk about Parker’s sports teams, particularly boys’ and girls’ basketball. However, the drop in temperature is a sign that another Parker team’s season is fully underway: Model United Nations.
Model United Nations, otherwise known as Model UN or MUN, is a global club in which students simulate the actual United Nations, an international government organization that maintains international cooperation and order. From October 14-18, students from Parker’s Model UN team travelled to Virginia for a three-day long conference in Charlottesville.

Hosted by the International Relations Organization at the University of Virginia (UVA) for 38 years, Virginia Model UN (VAMUN) is a premier high school Model UN conference located on the UVA campus and organized by a group of the university’s students. This year’s conference, lasting from November 16-18, was attended by nearly 700 delegates from schools across the country.

“Model UN is a wonderful learning by doing simulation,” Upper School history teacher and faculty co-sponsor of Model UN Jeanne Barr said. “It’s a chance to get students out of their textbooks and off the internet into dialogue with each other.

Parker’s delegation was comprised of 11 Upper School students: two freshmen and nine sophomores. Among these 11 delegates, three received awards based on their performance, including sophomore Sam Meiselman-Ashen, who was awarded “Outstanding Delegate” for his work as a delegate from the United Kingdom in the UNICEF committee.

“I thought really fun to be in a large delegation with a lot of people,” Meiselman-Ashen said. “Most people in my committee were really good, and everybody talked. In pas conferences, that hasn’t been the case so that was really fun. ”

Apart from their work in individual committees, delegates were treated to a session with Charles Blaha, the conference’s keynote speaker. Currently, Blaha works as the Director of the Office of Security and Human Rights in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Prior to his current role, Blaha served as the as Counselor for the Political and Specialized Agencies Section of the U.S. Mission to the UN in Geneva, where he worked on issues related to the UN Human Rights Council.

Aside from the events of the conference, Parker delegates enjoyed two days of sightseeing in Charlottesville, a seven minute drive from the UVA campus. Students toured Monticello, the estate of Thomas Jefferson, and went to the movies. Other activities were cancelled due to poor weather.
“It’s really cool to be on a college campus,” sophomore Grace Conrad said. “You can walk outside and see everybody in their dorms, which makes it feel like a very unified experience because all of the committee chairs go to the college there.”

Barr, who has been the faculty sponsor of Parker’s Model UN club for nearly two decades, acknowledges applicable skills a student can learn from Model UN. “There are lots of alums of my program who are doing this stuff now,” Barr said. “They’re out in the world, engaged in things that I know they first encountered through Model UN, so that’s really gratifying. If I want the world to be a better place, what better role for me than to train the next generation of leaders?”