Norris University Center will be teeming with about 350 high school students from across the country this weekend as Northwestern University Model United Nations hosts its first annual Model UN conference.
The conference kicks off tonight at 7 p.m. with an opening ceremony in Ryan Family Auditorium. Events will be held in Norris through Sunday, with participants from about 20 high schools expected to attend.
About 50 NU students will help with the conference by coordinating committees or working behind the scenes with check-in and registration.
As delegates in a mock session of the United Nations, students act as representatives of many of the most powerful countries in the world. The students are given an issue, such as North Korea’s nuclear weapons program or AIDS in Africa, and work toward viable resolutions.
“Model UN increases international awareness,” said Erica Emme, a Communication junior who will serve as secretary-parliamentarian of the conference. “Not only do (students) learn about important international issues and where different countries stand, but it also helps with debate and public speaking skills.
“You have to be able to come up with an argument and a quick retort while still relying on diplomacy and politeness,” she added.
Leaders of NU’s Model UN decided to host the conference to recruit high school students, Emme said. Many Ivy League schools host similar conferences on a much larger scale.
Mitch Holzrichter, secretary-general of the conference, attended similar Model UN conferences at Harvard University and the University of Chicago as a high school student. Such conferences boast more than 2,000 participants every year.
“I want these students to have the same experience I had in high school,” said Holzrichter, a Weinberg junior who also serves as The Daily’s business manager. “We want to give them a good perspective of Northwestern and really sell NU.”
Each high school was assigned one or more countries about two months ago by NU according to the school’s size and preferences. Since then students have been researching and writing papers about their countries’ positions on topics such as nuclear weapons, globalization and the importance of democratic elections.
Holzrichter said the organization tries to keep the represented countries geographically and culturally diverse, featuring mock delegations from the United States to Morocco and North Korea.
Model UN students face the task of overcoming an American perspective on foreign policy to adopt the views of other countries, Emme said.
“Some schools end up representing a country they’ve never heard of before, like Djibouti,” she said. “These kids had to spend a month and a half with Djibouti, learning about refugees and nukes and gaining a wider perspective of what’s going on.”
Ian Hurd, a NU political science professor who teaches an introductory course on international relations, said Model UN helps students understand what it is like to live outside the United States.
“Model UN forces students to really take on the interests of other countries as their own and to understand their perspective,” Hurd said. “It’s a great antidote for the American problem of seeing the U.S. as the most important place in the world.”
