BY ALEXA KOVACS
On the weekend of April 27 and 28, twelve high school students participated in the last Model United Nations conference of the year. It took place at the University of California, San Diego. Students prepared months in advanced for their last opportunity to win the Best Delegate award and take home the gavel.
This is Ferrahian’s first time participating in the UCSD MUN conference. It is now added to the line-up of conferences at UCLA, UCSB and UC Berkeley that students will attend. Like UCSB, this conference is single delegation and follows the collegiate rules of procedure. Most students are used to working with a partner when it comes to going to Model UN conferences. However, this was not a challenge for the delegates. They worked harder and they were aware that the harder the work the closer they will be to winning the gavel, which is the first place trophy of each committee.
This conference was the most impressive in terms of how well the delegates preformed. Their months of hard work and research paid off. Shushan Ginosyan, a senior who will be attending UCLA in the fall, was able to woo the chairs of her committee and win the Best Delegate award and the gavel. She participated in the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) committee representing Italy, where she spent two days with senior Garni Dadaian, who represented Belgium, debating the topic of Violence Against Woman. She was overwhelmed and couldn’t have been happier, especially with it being her last conference of the year. Shushan has participated in the MUN program since 8th grade, and has won multiple awards since then including research awards and Accommodation awards, which is third place. Shawnt Karakozian was the other delegate who brought home an award. Shawnt participated in the Crisis Committee. A crisis committee is a difficult room to be in, seeing as at any second a crisis could break out and delegates have to think quickly on their toes as to how to find a solution for a problem that they had never heard of and had never given a second thought about. This year’s Crisis Committee topic was Pandemic! Shawnt, also a veteran Ferrahian Model UN delegate, took home a research award, which is given to the delegate with the best position paper, and also took home the Outstanding Delegate award, which is second place.
Every single delegate of the Ferrahian group preformed to their best ability. They debated topics ranging from North African Migration into Europe to Waste Management. They were able to research and step into the shoes of UN delegates from around the world and give plausible solutions to problems that are relevant world-wide today.
