Submitted by Nikita Barde, Media Manager at Best Delegate & Staff Member of RUMUN 2013
RUMUN’s Secretariat (left to right: Vyshakh Kodoth, Sabrina Arias, Brandon Smith)
This past weekend, the Institute for Domestic and International Affairs (IDIA) hosted the Rutgers Model United Nations (RUMUN) conference at the Heldrich Hotel in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The conference was titled “The Future We Want”, with a theme of sustainable development to shape all the committees and weekend activities. RUMUN always focuses on making their conferences educational and informative for delegates, and many interactive activities, workshops, smaller committee sizes and focused debate to implement the theme. Sabrina Arias, Secretary-General of RUMUN 2013 commented on the success of the conference by stating that “the dedication and hard work of staff helped put on a flawless conference. The students and advisors loved the theme, activities, committee topics, and workshops, but most of all, they loved the professional and attentiveness of the staff members.” Arias, along with Vyshak Kodoth and Brandon Smith, the Director of Staff and Director of Adminstration, respectively, helped organize a successful conference that impressed over a thousand students, numerous faculty members, as well as the RUMUN staff, who learned a lot from the experience. Outlined are some of the unique parts of RUMUN 2013.
Outreach Programs. As mentioned before, RUMUN prides itself on placing a heavy emphasis on education for all delegates that attend, and began to work towards this goal several months prior to the conference. RUMUN’s outreach program encouraged schools to become more involved with Model UN, in an effort to teach them not only Model UN proceedings, but important skills such as cooperation, collaboration and leadership. IDIA staff members visited schools such as Highland Park High School and Stuart Country Day School.
Workshops and Activities.In addition, IDIA staff members organized workshops and activities in an effort to directly involve and interact with delegates on a more personal level. The conference workshops provided students with real world experiences related to politics and international affairs with presentations from knowledgeable IDIA staff members.
Visual Artwork. The Conference Logistics and Administration (CLA) team began designing and creating visuals to represent various aspects of sustainable development. Some of the visuals included a 10 foot poster describing the statistics regarding women and migration in rural, suburban, and urban areas, 3-dimensional models of different continents describing various aspects such as malnourishment, recycling rates, and urbanization, and a poster with key questions to give students key ideas to think about. Months of designing, cutting, assembling, writing and painting finally paid off, by giving students and faculty an opportunity to learn in an artistic manner.
Social Media. The IDIA staff encouraged students to learn more and relate to the theme by posting previews of each committee, updates regarding conference prep, and other posts relating to sustainable development on the official Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/RutgersModelUnitedNations) and Twitter account (@RutgersMUN). Students could respond to posts and add input of their own on both social media accounts, and this promoted the theme and conference prior to this past weekend.
The delegation awards were as following:
Best Large School- Highland Park High School
Best Medium School- The Dalton School
Best Small School- Elmont Memorial High School
Outstanding Large School- Franklin High School
Outstanding Medium School- Noor UlIman School
Outstanding Small School- Bergen County Academies
Here are some pictures from the conference (credits to Yuvraj Ram, RUMUN Staff Member)
RUMUN 2013 Staff
