Model United Nations brought home multiple awards from their first state competition as an official chapter, competing against high schools across Texas in a two-day virtual conference over the weekend. 

“Last year was supposed to be our first State conference as a club but it ended up being right around when COVID-19 first hit so it was canceled,” senior and Vice President Nayel Nasifa said via text. “This year the conference was fully virtual, but it took the same amount of effort to prepare and get all the delegates ready. It took months of hard work and preparation so it was really cool to see everyone perform so well.”

Sophomores Hiya Sharma, Vishnu Vasudev, and Sanjitha Vaidyanathan were awarded honorable delegate, best delegate, and outstanding delegate respectively, competing against more than a hundred other high school students across the state.

“I’m really excited about winning the Best Delegate award,” Vasudev said via text. “I’ve gotten both the 2nd place and 3rd place awards before, so I’m glad I finally got first. I did a fair bit of research before this conference, so I’m happy my work paid off.”

Working in mock UN committees, delegates tackled real-world issues with their peers, focusing on finding solutions to current events. 

“I worked with other students from all over Texas to write a resolution, which is basically a plan, to address a particular issue,” Vasudev said via text. “My topic was the Repatriation of Intellectual Property and Cultural Artifacts, so we made a plan to address the issue of artifacts and art being stolen in the past (such as during colonialism) and to prevent the future theft of these artifacts. 

Model UN came to campus in 2019, initially with three members. Now, with over 40 delegates, several club officers had a hand in planning on the State level as well. 

“We had a good number of Liberty kids involved with planning the conference as well as debating,” Nasifa said. “Our club parliamentarian Arshia Narula was chosen to be a chair, meaning she helped moderate one of the committees, and Trisha Dasgupta and Gurnoor Narula were on the State Secretariat, which means that they helped put together the conference in general.”

Model United Nations is a sister club to the Youth and Government program, both of which are hosted by the YMCA, and administered by Humanities and AP U.S. History teacher, Sarah Wiseman. 

“This is what happens when you have an excellent youth development program and excellent club leadership,” Wiseman said in a tweet. “These kids have done this in just 2 years!”

After practicing all year under strange circumstances due to the ongoing pandemic, Nasifa looks back at the importance of the club given current events. 

“I feel like Model United Nations is more important than ever because of everything going around the world with COVID-19,” Nasifa said. “Seeing high school students talk about solutions to these very heavy world issues is insane because you can see that they really care. We tend to focus so much on everything that’s wrong, but in Model UN we focus on how we can fix these issues that concern us, and I think that’s a very powerful thing.”