Over 600 student delegates took over the school last weekend to compete in McMUNC, the McLean’s Model United Nations competition.

“McMUNC is the McLean Model United Nations Team’s very own conference where delegates from other schools come to compete,” junior and McLean Model UN Director of Education Neha Rana said.

Students from Thomas Jefferson High School,Oakton High School,  Langley High School, and even Henrico High School in Richmond gathered at McLean for the competition.

“McMUNC has definitely been on the rise for the past three years. Not only is our conference gaining more popularity throughout Northern Virginia, but McLean MUN Team is becoming a nationally-known team,” Rana said.

“McMUNC is definitely making a name for itself in the area, considering it’s only our third year and we had 600 delegates attend this year,” junior and McMUNC Crisis Direction Asia Kurtalic said.

McMUNC had a variety of committees ranging in type in age range, offering middle schoolers and high schoolers many different opportunities to compete.

“We have a large variety of committees, ranging from military based committees to more specific ones such as UNWoman. We also had crisis committees which have a slightly different format and are more fast paced and based on single historical or present day events,” Kurtalic said.

Preparation for the event began at the end of last school year, and has been intense and strenuous, especially during the weeks leading up to the conference.

“We drafted background guides and committee ideas over the summer while many of us were on vacation, and for the last month we have had a lot of intense prep work,” Kurtalic said.

“I was lucky that the leadership is on top of things,” said McLean MUN sponsor Rick Barron. “I helped with the finances and I made sure that the students had the spaces that they needed reserved, but the rest of the organization [fell] on them.”

The goals of McMUNC were to facilitate other students’ public speaking and problem solving skills through Model UN and to help solidify McLean Model UN Team’s position as one of the dominant Model UN teams in the area. Already a nationally-known team from their success at NAIMUN (Georgetown University’s international invitational competition), the McLean Model UN team looked to affirm their status regionally and to demonstrate the power of Model UN.

“MUN helps people gain confidence in not only public speaking skills, but overall social skills,” said Rana. “Through Model UN, you learn to be more outgoing, talkative, and charismatic. If you do it enough, you realize that this club is more like a tight knit family.”