I’ve talked a little bit about what it’s like to compete as a member of the Pomona College Model United Nations (PCMUN) team. As a reminder – despite having Pomona in the name the PCMUN team is 4C (CMC has their own team). Aside from going to conferences, we actually host our own. SageMUN is put together by PCMUN and hosted at the Pomona campus every year usually in early February. This conference is open to both high school and college students and offers a wide array of committees ranging from your traditional General Assembly to Crisis to more Specialized UN bodies like the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Besides being an incredibly fun team experience, this conference helps members acquire leadership and necessary teamwork skills.
While everyone is expected to lead in some capacity, there is a more formalized planning committee which is referred to as the Secretariat. This board is composed of the Secretary General, Director General, Under Secretary General (usually a two-person position), and a Social Media Coordinator. This year I actually hold a more formalized position – I am the Under Secretary General with one of my friends. The primary role of this committee is to manage all the logistical stuff like booking rooms, buying awards, creating merchandise, promoting the event, assigning other PCMUN members their tasks. Through my time on this board, I’ve gathered a better understanding of the time and energy it takes to host such a huge event and all the nitty gritty details that take months of work to iron out.
However, the Secretariat isn’t doing all of the work. During the fall semester, the rest of the team members are assigned a background guide that they are supposed to create. A background guide is a key document that details all the necessary information and context needed for a given committee. Putting together a background requires a lot of individual and collaborative research. Last year, my team had to spend countless weeks to figure out how to format the background guide and how to research in a way that keeps all the information streamlined and actually beneficial to the competitor. A lot of the skills I learned from this process I have actually been able to apply to my other classes.
There are more updates to come from SageMUN – so stay tuned to see how it turns out 🙂