Most freshmen at Preuss will be participating in the Junior Model United Nations (JMUN) Conference that will be held from May 29-30 at UCSD extension. To participate, students are assigned countries, and then each student picks a topic or a committee to conduct research on. The two main assignments are the Position paper and the Resolution paper. Participating in JMUN is a great opportunity to meet new people and to learn new skills.
“JMUN gives students practice with public speaking, researching and writing, and in an authentic setting,” states Ms. Boquiren, Ethnic Studies teacher and MUN advisor.
Some choose not to participate because they are scared to talk in front of a group of people. Students can get very shy about public speaking, but participating in JMUN will help them in the future. They will learn how to speak in front of a large crowd. Researching and writing are skills that we are going to use for the rest of our lives. Finally, an authentic setting shows us possible future careers. This year’s countries consist of Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and Tanzania.
There are four committees and a handful of organizations students can pick from. For example, the topics for the first committee range from “Regulating Artificial Intelligence (AI) As A Weapon Of War,” to “Facilitating The Disarmament Of Active War Zones,” and “Evaluating The Prominence Of Chemical Weapons As A Threat.” If a student is committing to the WHO committee, World Health Organization, the options they can pick from are “Providing Proper Nutrition For Infants,” “Solditing Access To Immunization,” and “Protecting Against The Health Effect of Environment Pollution.”
Freshmen are then assigned a position paper, a one-page research paper, to answer the assigned questions. This assignment is beneficial for students because they learn about their country during this time. We also learn about all the different problems our world is facing. When I completed this assignment, I learned about environmental pollution in Russia. I learned that Russia is trying to push their citizens to use more public transportation and manufacture more electric vehicles so that they can reduce air pollution. As a result of my topic and research, I was able to learn about world topics. We are the next generation and we need to care for our world so we can have a healthier environment. After learning about pollution, I started to think of how much this will have a positive impact.
The next big assignment is the resolution paper. The paper is very tedious to write. First, students have to fill out a resolution sheet, where they come up with an idea on how they will solve the problem we chose. In my case, I chose to solve environmental pollution. I came up with the idea to make an invention that cleans up air pollution at a certain distance. In this assignment, students also have to find out how their solution will be funded and how long it will take. Then, they start writing the resolution.
After months of adapting to the work for the JMUN conference, a student can learn a lot about the world. Many students ask why they put in all this effort in the work if they are not going to the conference, but what they don’t know is how much JMUN has to offer. It gives them the chance to learn about a country, what they are dealing with, and how they are going to solve that issue. Among that, if students do attend the conference, it looks good on your resume. Therefore, students should be encouraged to participate in JMUN for all the new strengths they can learn from it.
