McKendree Hosts Model UN Remotely for High School Students

Triad, O’Fallon Earn Outstanding Delegation Awards 

(LEBANON, Ill., March 16, 2021) — McKendree University hosted a remote version of its annual Model United Nations March 10-12, with approximately 150 student delegates from ten local high schools participating via videoconference. 

Model UN provides students with an opportunity to learn how the UN operates and to practice their public speaking, debate, negotiation and team leadership skills. Many of today’s leaders in law, government, business and the arts – including at the UN itself – participated in Model UN as high school and college students.

Triad High School won the Most Outstanding Delegation Award for its Russia delegation. O’Fallon Township High School also won an Outstanding Delegation Award for its Vietnam delegation. Belleville East, Belleville West, CBC (St. Louis), Althoff, Valmeyer, Mascoutah, Gibault (Waterloo) and Highland high schools took part in the remote event. (The university typically hosts 300 to 350 students from 15 schools at its on-site event each year in April.) 

Committee topics this year were as follows: 

• General Assembly - human trafficking, children in armed conflict, climate change refugees

• Security Council - the Middle East, Iran, Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Economic and Social - aging populations, currency manipulation, economic inequality

• Science and Tech - peaceful use of outer space, broadband access, rules for robotic weaponry

• Special Political - poaching endangered species, right to protest, election interference

• World Health Organization - global vaccine action plan, mental health, drug resistant pathogens

• Legal - territorial claims, rights of stateless persons, cybercrime

• Social, Cultural, Humanitarian - refugee crisis, digital privacy, drug control

 

-McK-