For the first time in history, McLean Model UN was awarded Best Large Delegation last weekend at the Virginia Model United Nations Conference (VAMUN), hosted by the University of Virginia. This honor is given to the school with the highest average number of awards per delegate.
“McLean is kind of the underdog school compared to schools with bigger teams like Langley or Thomas Jefferson, so definitively sweeping at a national conference felt amazing,” said senior Annika Singh, co-secretary general of Model UN. “There was no way that anyone could even touch us as at that conference. Every officer did amazing, and did a great job training everybody for VAMUN.”
All 21 members of the VAMUN team received an award, the most out of any school. McLean won 10 gavels, seven Outstanding Delegate awards, two Honorable Delegates and two Verbal Commendations.
“[They announced] that McLean won every single General Assembly committee at the awards ceremony. We all had a feeling that we were going to win Best Large Delegation, but we didn’t know by how much,” said senior Jad Osta, co-secretary general of Model UN. “Langley didn’t beat us in one committee, and we’ve never beaten Langley in a national conference before.”
To prepare for VAMUN, McLean’s Model UN team implemented new training methods.
“We did a mock conference that was chaired by our sponsor amongst the people who made the national team, so everyone could get feedback on their speaking style,” Singh said. “We had some of the best sponsors—Ms. Prentiss, Ms. Stackhouse, Mr. Wedan and Ms. Murdock. All of them were amazing, and they helped us a lot with training.”
McLean Model UN hopes to carry this momentum into the Ivy League Model United Nations Conference, a national conference at the University of Pennsylvania in January.
“Our hopes are to win Best Large Delegation again, which is insane because this will be the first year that we go as a large delegation to ILMUNC,” Osta said. “All of the top Model UN schools from across the entire country and internationally go to ILMUNC, so it’s a big opportunity for us to show everybody that at the end of the day, surely it’s McLean on top.”
