Aryav Dhar ‘24
EA hosted their very own in-person Model UN conference on campus this year instead of traveling to Philadelphia or doing an online conference like they did in previous years. Led by David Mercante, Upper School History Teacher, the conference was held on Friday, February 25th and Saturday, February 26th.
Photo courtesy of the EA Communications Department
A committee of students helped to lead the conference. Mercante explains, “The team is made up of seven students. Typically we have five seniors and two juniors on the leadership team. This year, our seniors are Alec Riley, Arjun Bhamra, Emmie O’Neil, Josh Huang, and Maddie Dennis. Our juniors are Anika Agarwal and Logan Schlitt.”
Mercante elaborates on the role of the student leadership team, saying, “In a typical year when we travel, the leadership team helps out a lot with building interest for the club. They also ultimately decide what conference we will go to. Usually, we pick the one here in Philadelphia, but that’s up to them.” In addition, the leadership team helps the EA participants get ready for the conference, and they monitor the students throughout the conference.
Mercante continues, “This year, since we are not going to an outside conference, the leadership team has actually done a little more work. They planned our conference in terms of hammering out ideas, schedules, picking topics, and making background guides. This year, they will also be the people chairing our committees, so they will be running the day to day operations of the conference as opposed to participating.”
Anika Agarwal ‘23, a member of the leadership team, comments on her experience prepping for the conference, saying, “Many of us are chairing committees. Part of that process is creating background guides on the two issues, which were the treatment of Uyghurs in China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We also offered some optional sessions to train delegates in case they wanted help learning the rules of Model UN and what it would look like.”
The conference that the EA Model UN team typically attends is the Ivy League Model United Nations Conference, or ILMUNC, which is run annually by the University of Pennsylvania. ILMUNC is usually a large-scale, international conference, which consists of carefully crafted committees each year that range from General Assembly committees like the Disarmament and Security Committee (DISEC) to Crisis committees like the 2020 iteration’s War of the Roses Crisis simulation.
When pandemic complications arose, the EA leadership team needed to reconsider travel plans and lodgings in Philadelphia. Mercante explains, “Because of COVID, we weren’t really sure if we would be able to attend a conference in person. At the time when we needed to make plans, overnight trips hadn’t been approved.”
However, the student leadership team worked hard in modeling the EA conference based on their own experiences at previous conferences like ILMUNC. In particular, the leadership team made the decision to use a majority of the ILMUNC rules for both General Assembly and Crisis committees.
Many members of the community were impressed with the EA Model UN conference. Karen Xiao ‘22, a participant in Model UN, says, “I think the idea of having a conference at EA is really cool. Considering the circumstances this year I’m impressed that EA was able to do this. Also, now that EA has a template for holding its own conference, the MUN club will be able to hold their own conferences to prepare for ILMUNC and other conferences in the future.” Mercante says however, “For next year, it is far more likely that the club will attend the normal conference in the city.”