Abingdonian 2020

24 The Abingdonian Lent 2020 Model United Nations I took over MUN at the beginning of the academic year. As Secretary-General I wanted to focus on two things; improving the conferences we hosted (where students debate current affairs while representing different countries) and increasing the number of young students in MUN. Our highlight this year was Abingdon’s MUN conference. Last year’s main conference went well, but I felt that given the size of the school, it was too large for a first attempt. Because we didn’t have enough of our own involved in MUN, we faced difficulties on the day with logistical issues such as printing. At the end of last academic year we staged a smaller mock conference involving schools from Abingdon town alone. This was more successful because we could focus on getting our delivery right without compromising on quality. It was this experience that allowed us to build up to a slightly larger conference — though still only from Abingdon town — on 29 January. We had some initial difficulties finding chairs for each of our five committees, and, once we’d established these, we nearly had to cull a committee because we struggled to confirm how many students from outside Abingdon were coming. As Sec-Gen I was worried about this on the day, but the registration process went very well; we started on time and ran a day of quality debate. It was the first large-scale trial of our YoungMUN wing (third years put through an MUN training program) at one of our own conferences; most of our own attendees (around 30) were from the third or fourth year, and did astonishingly well, taking several awards. I enjoyed the end of the conference the most, because bringing all our delegates together for the last debate was quite exciting. Normally, in our final session, we tell the delegates about a crisis in the form of a video. Within an hour, the delegates have to come up with a UN-led response. This year, I wanted our crisis to focus on the Russian government; a coup gone wrong, destroying the Kremlin, killing the President, and creating a power vacuum into which a general and a disgraced politician both stepped, fomenting civil war. Usually, actually making the video involves hasty shots in empty classrooms between lessons, but I wanted something different. I grew up surrounded by Lego and now, eight years later, I wanted to put the skills I’d honed to use. Over the course of several weeks I shot a stop-motion film where charismatic Lego minifigures played terrorists battling soldiers in Moscow. It was received very well, with delegates representing Russia, France and China making reference to the foreboding scenes of minifigures torn apart in its gory plastic scenes. The second highlight of the end of the conference was our keynote speaker. Layla Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, spoke engagingly on why international politics was important to her, and why student-led debate on the subject mattered. She took questions from the floor and talked about how her views as a Liberal Democrat led her to consider international issues such as the Israel-Palestine dispute. Our success at school was reinforced