Abingdonian 2018

53 www.abingdon.org.uk Summer Term honing later, the model is ready to be wheeled out at our own inaugural MUN conference. Clearly the training paid off as Abingdon students excelled at MUN MCS in February: we won a huge thirteen individual awards including best delegate awards for Raman Handa in Historical Committee (a hugely impressive achievement on his first conference), Hayden Ramm in Health and Environment, Patrick Gwillim- Thomas in Human Rights, and for me in the Security Council. Alexander Mannix, Patrick, Hayden, Louis Brosnan, Alec de Jongh and I were also named best delegation as China, meaning that Abingdon essentially won the conference - a fantastic performance from everyone involved. Our success continued at Haileybury in March at our first truly international conference. Spanning three days, HMUN was a vast spectacle with hundreds of delegates in attendance. Abingdon again took the top spot as Japan, comprising Alexander Mannix, Thomas Morris, Hayden Ramm, Ben Ffrench and Silas Gill, was named one of three distinguished delegations. Hayden, Ben, Silas and Lancelot Wilson all individually won distinguished delegate awards in addition, while Abingdon delegates (plus two St Helen’s MUNners) won six highly commended awards between them, a suitable send off for our outgoing Upper Sixth MUNners. I was no help in contributing to the awards tally at all as my application to serve as Guest Chair of the GA2: Economic and Financial committee was accepted by the conference organisers, so the efforts of our delegations were carried by the up and coming future leaders of AbingMUN such as Hayden Ramm and Lancelot Wilson who were appointed Deputy Heads of MUN by Mrs Yarker and Mr James after the conference. Lancelot did not waste time in making his mark on Abingdon MUN. In the Summer Term, he devised and delivered a course to take ten completely new third year MUNners and train them up for their first conference, Bishop Thomas Grant MUN in June, a conference designed explicitly for third years and below. In the space of a term, Lancelot had them so well drilled in MUN procedure and debate that come the conference, they were able to put in an outstanding performance, with Abingdon delegates winning awards in all three committees. I was chairing the Security Council, in which both of Abingdon’s representatives, Owen Henney and Ted Smethurst, were particularly impressive. Before Abingdon broke up for the summer, we had time to fit in one last MUN event, a lively one-day workshop at St Helens which provided a final opportunity to hone our skills before the summer break. I’m often asked to justify why Model United Nations is important and worthwhile. I think an understanding of the UN is vital and will become increasingly so over the coming years for anyone who wants to be a part of solving the greatest problems that we are faced with at this time. Issues of nuclear proliferation, of climate change and the need to develop clean energy or perish, of humanitarian crises caused by migration and epidemics, of rogue states and civil wars, can only be addressed by an international community acting in concert. As countries ever more often seem to be turning their backs on international cooperation, seen in Trump’s abandonment of the Paris accords, Brexit, and the problems of division within the P5 crippling hopes of progress, the United Nations will need to reform to survive. The alternative is a descent into a future characterised by fragmentation and war, the destruction of our environment, and inability to prevent the human suffering that could so easily be resolved by an international community acting together. I view Model UN as my chance to inform myself about the issues we will all have to face in the hope that one day I’ll be in a position to help tackle them. I know that many of my colleagues in Abingdon MUN, and the like-minded people we’ve met though our years of taking part in MUN conferences, share this sense of duty, and are rehearsing for when the time comes that we can act. Therefore we feel that MUN and activities like it are absolutely worth the time and energy we invest in them. Alasdair Czaplewski, 6JEF