Model UN Takes Tennessee

From Washington, D.C., to California, to Canada, the SHS Model United Nations’ students have traveled all over the country to participate in conferences with the nation’s best high schools. This year, the club is going south to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. The trip will be held from October 18th to the 22nd, with fifty SHS students attending. Departing on Southwest Airlines from Boston Logan Airport at 8:15 in the morning, the students and teachers will land at Nashville International Airport after a three-hour plane ride. SHS history teachers Heather Willinger, Mike Matisoff, and Andrew Roberts, along with English teacher Cathy Hall and math department chair Elizabeth Grindle, will chaperone the trip. The students will miss a total of four days of school but will gain a new and worldly perspective outside of the Scituate community.

According to Model UN advisers Willinger and Matisoff, a lot of planning has gone into this trip, including booking flights, transportation, hotels, collecting money, writing position papers, and setting up the conference details. Willinger described this specific excursion as “probably one of the most… challenging trips,” as this trip is “starting about a month earlier than [they] usually go on a trip and so [the officers] kind of hit the ground running in the fall, where [the club] usually doesn’t go till November.”

In the past, Model UN has traveled to different colleges and universities all over America, including the University of California, Berkeley, Boston College, George Washington University, and Brown University.

Last year’s trip to California was historically significant, as Berkeley Model UN was founded back in 1952. Berkeley was one of the first colleges to sponsor modern Model UN conferences, starting a tradition of debating and learning. While reflecting on past trips, Willinger said she’s “always loved Brown [University].” The club has gone to the Brown University conference every fall for multiple years. Although the beloved Brown trip is discontinued for this year, the club is excited for a new adventure at Vanderbilt University.

Abby LaBreck and Annie Sullivan, members of the Class of 2019, are two of the four Head Officers, and they played a crucial role in planning and organizing this trip. LaBreck and Sullivan described how this specific Vanderbilt United Nations conference has a lot of “interesting crisis committees” with “over 100 schools from all over the nation attending.” LaBreck and Sullivan helped organized five Model UN meetings prior to the trip. In the meetings, Sullivan explained how “[the students] research for their position papers to learn about their topics and committees” in order to prepare for the conference.

LaBreck and Sullivan emphasized how the club offers such a great opportunity for SHS students. Hinting there may be an international trip being planned for the spring of 2019, LaBreck said, “Stay tuned.”