Get a glimpse of what being a delegate at the United Nations is like while fighting in a debate about current issues and affairs.

The Model United Nations Club, led by Mr. Ralph Miller, meets in room 328 each Thursday during lunch to provide diligent and responsible students with a simulation where they can represent a country or organization for a meet.

The club has students write essays on current controversies and represent countries or companies from differing points of view, forcing students to dive into other perspectives and have a stronger and more complete opinion on a controversy.

Most students get a glimpse of MUN in their freshman year when the program runs an FRESHMUN. This grabs the attention of many students and is what often leads kids to take the class. The class throws you immediately into an in-class conference, so you can get used to what it is like to argue and get positions passed while talking in front of large groups. This may seem intimidating, but public speaking is such a vital skill, and it is better to learn in front of your peers rather than students from other schools at a conference. Many people taking the class are veterans of the program, so you won’t ever be alone. Someone will always be willing to help you develop your ideas in writing.

The class doesn’t just do debates. Other activities are done in the class to further develop your skills of quickly creating speaking points and sharing them in front of the class.

The club is a way for freshmen to take MUN before their sophomore year. It also is typically where students gather to develop the events run by the programs like AUSMUN and FRESHMUN.

AUSMUN is a Model United Nations event that gathers students across the Austin area to become delegates and try to resolve problems with other delegates in their designated simulation. The chair worked vigorously for months to create a well-structured event for not only Austin High students but for other schools as well. Even though they were met with the challenge of 346 delegates registered this year, which is just shy of double the amount of delegates they had the year prior, they still made enough conferences for everyone involved. AUSMUN’s conferences all ran smoothly. According to Summer Rose, the Secretary-General for AUSMUN, “We had more delegates than we’ve ever even come close to having in a conference before.” Rose appraised the schools as well, “ I thought it was really amazing to see how many schools came out, how many diverse perspectives there were, and the amount of people and staff that we had.”

The conference featured nine standard committees and four crisis committees. Each committee was well-constructed and enjoyable. Faced with so many extra students, the team had to work to find how to fit all the extra delegates into the committees, which they completed effectively.

FRESHMUN is an event run by MUN students and club members. They work to construct conferences for and assign delegations to each freshman. The freshmen work in their English classes with MUN students to create their position papers and research for the debate and then battle it out for 2 hours. It offers incoming sophomores a glimpse into what MUN is like while getting to work on it during class time and with their friends.

MUN is a meaningful class to take, giving students a community and teaching them skills such as public speaking, leadership, communication, and research The class gets to host enjoyable conferences very frequently, giving students ample opportunities to go to fun places and debate with your friends. Join Model United Nations to participate in fun conferences, develop lifelong skills, and put yourself in a community full of persistent and dedicated students.

UPDATE: AHS MODEL UN CRUSHES IT AT COMPETITION

Congratulations go out to your Austin High Model UN team as they emerged victorious this weekend at the largest Model UN conference in the southern United States, CT MUN, which is held at The University of Texas at Austin.  Delegates from  all over the southern US come to UT to compete and your MUN team showed that it is comfortable competing at an elite level.

Please help congratulate the following award winners:
Lily Gottlieb–Honorable Delegate
Sage Willmore–Honorable Delegate
Meyer Hirsch–Honorable Delegate
Serena Ray–Best Delegate
Cheyenne Wright–Best Delegate