Sixteen Model UN delegates from the school attended their first conference of the year on Nov. 10-12 at the Stanford Model United Nations Conference (SMUNC). Although the team didn’t win any awards, participants said the skills and feedback taken away from the experience will aid them in future conferences.

For this event, delegates were paired together to represent a country, assigned to them two weeks prior. The conference was many delegates’ first time writing position papers, or detailed write-ups about their countries and topics.  

Though there was a steep learning curve for many rookies, officers felt they came out having learned a lot about their topics and the whole Model UN process, Tadikonda said. 

“We had a lot of new delegates at Stanford this year so the fact that their first conference was a college one was an incredible leap,” vice president Anushka Tadikonda said. “But I saw that they not only enjoyed the conference but also I witnessed increased confidence in public speaking, improvement in resolution writing, and enhanced networking skills.”

Delegate Akash Gupta was in the United Nations Human Settlement Programme representing Germany, and their topics revolved around the issues surrounding rights-based urbanization and building gender-equitable cities.

“It was a lot of fun meeting new people, especially the delegates who flew out from Peru,” Gupta said. “There were delegates of many different experience levels, and it helped me learn how to be more comfortable even when I may be less experienced than others.”