After four years of hard work, the wall separating Brookline and Berlin has fallen, and the Model United Nations Club of the high school will venture this month to Berlin for the first time.
Senior Diego Fernandez-Pages has been working on the trip since his freshmen year.
“Previous Secretary Generals had compiled applications to bring the school committee every year, and finally, we wrote it for the fourth time last year, and we pushed it through the school committee, and it worked, and we got everything together,” Pages said.
On Nov. 18, they will travel to participate in a rigorous three-day-long Berlin Model United Nations Conference.
“Model UN is all about the simulation of the United Nations, and you ideally want to get as close as possible to simulating the real experience, so going to a foreign country and traveling where they have different interests really culminates it all together,” junior Josh Lepson said.
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For regular updates from MUN’s trip to Berlin, check out their blog.
[/ezcol_1quarter] The club has been assigned to play the roles of the Iraqi and Romanian delegations and will represent them in five committees: Human Rights, Disarmament, Politics, Environment and a special committee.
According to the Berlin Model UN’s website, over 700 students from all over the world will participate in the event. There will be opening and closing ceremonies in which each country gives a welcome address and policy speech.
According to Fernandez-Pages, after the opening ceremonies and speeches are done, they will split up into the five committees and attempt to come up with resolutions about specific issues. They will then reconvene and engage in an un-moderated madhouse of a debate.
Senior Henry Shreffler, the club’s secretary general, hopes to gain a greater understanding of cultural differences and use that to find solutions to international problems.
“A good example is HIV/AIDS,” Shreffler said. “We have our view of AIDS, and central Africa has their views of AIDS, and in order to solve the AIDS epidemic, we need to understand how everyone thinks about it, not just how America thinks. It’s a great skill for empathy in the world.”
Fernandez-Pages will sheathe his competitive nature and drive to win for this conference.
“I’m here to make connections, to learn a little more about the city and the United Nations everywhere else, and have fun more than to strive for that award,” he said.
The group will also be able to enjoy the wonders of a foreign city, rich with history and amiable to the hordes of tourists that travel there each year, and will do so under the supervision of social studies teachers Mark Wheeler and Joanne Burke-Hunter.
“We get a lot of free time outside the conference to explore the city, and we are going to be visiting a lot of museums. Berlin has such cultural richness, and we are going to be making the most of it,” Shreffler said.
The trip is not cheap. According to Lepson, it costs $1600 per person, much of which is coming out of pocket. The club has hosted numerous bake-sales and is planning a benefit concert in the near future to try and defray the cost.
The club has been preparing for the trip and conference diligently.
“There are two parts of preparation: The policy side and the cultural side. We’re going to be picking a book this next meeting that will be about Berlin and its history. It might be a non-fiction book or a novel, but we are going to read about what makes Berlin, Berlin,” Shreffler said. “For the policy side, each person has their own specific country and committee, so they will be doing a lot of research to figure out how to best represent the interests of their countries, which will involve mostly online databases and general research.”
“I’ve seen friendships grow out over the course of three days,” Shreffler said. “I’ve seen people who have never met each other come out of a conference three days later as best friends for life.”
Jacob Steinfeld can be contacted at [email protected].
