We were all ready to jump on the antics revealed in Slate’s mini insider’s view of Model United Nations, and then we remembered it was just a few years ago in high school that we were MUN members. For three years. Before we got kicked out for, uh, reasons still unknown (seriously, that’s true, we never found out).
For the uninitiated, MUN is where two echelons of high school collide: On on side are the future neoconservative geeks who lay awake at night thinking of new General Assembly resolutions to spread peace through the world, and on the other are high school kids looking for an excuse to party in Manhattan. Guess which group we were a part of. (Assholes!)
Either way, both groups are expected to convene for a weekend on 2nd Avenue, where they take over a hotel’s conference areas and conclude in the UN Building for, among political discussions of international relations, memorable photo ops (you can thank us later for this insider’s info).
So we must congratulate Slate’s Michael McGough, not for his bravery or journalistic ethos, but for staying awake longer than we ever imagined during one of these crapshoot assemblies of thought provocation and text message wars.
After spending my first night at MUN with the South African cabinet, I have been chamber-hopping, gaining entr??e with my handwritten MEDIA nametag. If experienced MUNers dominate the committees, it seems that the general assemblies are where you’re more likely to find the novices. Some of the speakers in the larger rooms are as eloquent as the cr??me de la cr??me in the committees, but I also see a lot of younger kids, including one I dub the Littlest Diplomat, a boy who, perhaps up past his bedtime, reclined on a couple of chairs while his elders, relatively speaking, kept talking.
Funny, because we represented South Africa one year, though we weren’t up past our bedtime. We were up past yesterday’s bedtime.