In the upcoming week, the Model UN team at McLean will be polishing position papers, developing engaging speeches, and cramming in research for the Virginia Model United Nations Conference, VAMUN.

VAMUN, held from November 16th to November 18th, will be the first national conference of the school year and will kick start the Model UN season at Mclean.

“VAMUN is a three day Model UN conference thats down in the University of Virginia,” said sophomore Kyla Duggal, member of the Model UN team.

Model UN, more commonly abbreviated to “MUN”, is an academic extracurricular that imitates the interaction of the real United Nations, encouraging intense debate and diplomacy.

“You go and you compete as if you are a county in the United Nations, and you try to solve real world problems,” Duggal said.

At the VAMUN conference, students, acting as delegates, will be able to participate in committees modeled after UN committees.

“I’m in a General Assembly, and our topics are Disarmament of Outer Space and Cybersecurity around the world,” sophomore Samir Chowdhury said.

This year, 24 Mclean students will be attending VAMUN. However, only one of those students is a freshman.

“It’s my first high school conference and my first national conference too,” freshman Cynthia Ma said.

Even though Ma is the youngest on the MUN team, she has been heavily practicing and readying herself for VAMUN.

“My partner and I are researching lots creative ideas, and I guess I’m really mentally preparing and thinking about how I am going to speak at the conference,” Ma said. “I think that it’s going to be a good experience.”

Based off of the huge success at national conferences last year, McLean is expected to do well at VAMUN and hopefully win multiple awards.

“Last year and the year before, McLean actually won the North American Invitational Model UN conference. So we’re expecting to take it home again at UVA,” Chowdhury said. “We’re hoping to get best school again.”