Students travel to New York City for NHSMUN conference

Screen Shot 2019-03-18 at 9.48.37 AM — LOUD AND CLEAR: Sophomore Ava Moffett gives a speech to her committee at the National High School Model United Nations conference. A total of 30 Costa students traveled to New York, along with students from over 300 other schools. Photo courtesy of Christine Garrison

By Sam Bell

Staff Writer

Mira Costa’s Model United Nations program attended the 45th annual National High School MUN conference from March 6-9 in New York, New York.

A total of 30 Costa sophomores, juniors and seniors attended the conference, which approximately about 2,000 students from more than 300 schools across 75 different countries attended. Costa’s main competitors, Huntington Beach High School and Horace Mann School also attended the conference.

“This conference is unlike any other in the sense that it focused less on individual efforts and talents and more on cooperation,” junior delegate Jack Bush said. “In this specific debate they don’t give out individual awards.

NHSMUN is the largest high school conference in the world and allows delegates to visit ambassadors or representatives of the Permanent Mission for the countries they are representing.

“We discussed various economic problems sprouted from around the world,” junior delegate Alexia Pepemehmetoglu said. “We covered conflicts and health issues that are global matters.”

NHSMUN featured a total of 28 committees, consisting of 20 general committees and eight specialized agencies. Each committee focuses on a different affair that affects the entire world. Committees such as the Historical Crisis Committee, Crisis Committee, Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice debated about current events across the world.

“In my committee specifically we discussed refugee displacement due to climate change and natural disasters,” Bush said. “Others discussed falsified medicine, to combating terrorism in Southeast Asia.”

Experts from the UN, government and military and celebrity advocates also attended the conference. Students were able to debate with their peers in a setting moderated by students from the most elite universities, according to the NHSMUN website.

“The debate as a whole emphasized the importance of teamwork as we all have to understand our topics to ensure that we will do our best in our debate,” Pepemehmetoglu said.