From Oct. 4 to Oct. 5, McLean’s Model United Nations hosted McMUNC, the annual Model UN conference hosted at McLean. High schools in the DMV area traveled to McLean to participate in various Model UN committees. Participating schools included local schools such as Langley, Thomas Jefferson and Chantilly High School along with international schools like the British International School of Washington and King Abdullah Academy.

“For McMUNC, we definitely improved the efficiency [from last year],” said senior Emily Ma, Director General. “We hosted around 500 delegates and this year’s Secretariat was a lot faster because we implemented things such as bringing boxes of folders to every committee instead of passing them out at registration which saved us a lot of time and physical effort.”

McMUNC was organized by the Secretariat, McLean’s Model UN officers for McMUNC.

“This was my first year being in the Secretariat. It was very different, mainly the prep work before, I didn’t know how much work went into it,” said junior Annika Singh, Co-Director of Crisis. “At the conference, I was making sure everything was going smoothly. I also did chair evaluations where I would walk in and ask how everything was going.”

While McLean students could not compete, several Model UN members took on the role of committee chair, taking the responsibility to prepare and facilitate their individual committees.

“I planned crisis updates, wrote a background guide and wrote descriptions of potential people the delegates can represent,” said junior Jad Osta, specialized committee chair. “When chairing and evaluating different peoples’ performance, you understand what chairs are looking for when you’re competing in other conferences.”

With the success of McMUNC, McLean Model UN is looking forward to their next conference where McLean students are allowed to compete in committees.

“Although we only host one conference every year because it takes nine months of preparation, our next big event is the VAMUN trials which is UVA’s model UN conference which is national,” Ma said. “We’re going to host tryouts for it, then travel to UVA’s campus and stay there for a few days to compete.”