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MUNUC has been interesting thus far. Random observations:
1) it's really cool to live in the uber-executive floors of a posh downtown hotel. The shower spigots are these long things on a hinge, so that you can swing them up for showering, or shut them against the wall for non-showering. Why so elaborate? It's cause there's 2 showerheads on this thing. They're slanted toward each other so that you get an especially dense area of water. Since there's the hinge thing, these showerheads are also positioned directly above your head, with the water falling more or less down, instead of at an angle.
And the blankets are comfy.
2) Info is really the best aspect of MUNUC
So MUNUC has these different positions.
There's the ExCom (Executive Committee). They work really really hard and they basically run this thing. The few ExCom I've talked to have each had a total of 40 hours of sleep in the last 2 weeks. That's 3 hours of sleep per night. For 2 weeks. Talk about stress!
Then for every committee, there's the Chair, the Moderator, and the Assistant Chairs (AC). The Chair is the one who decides the 2 topics for the delegates to debate. S/he is the one who writes two 20-page topic papers in, like March or April, submit it, and maaaybe get picked as Chair for the following year. S/he would be the one who actually knows the topic pretty much inside-out. She keeps tabs on topic-related news, reads position papers, etc. The Moderator is the one who runs the committee sessions, basically calling for votes, keeping decorum, etc etc. The ACs are basically wee minions. Wee bored minions. They run around fetching stuff or delivering messages or screening notes. When they're not doing that, they're basically sitting in committee being bored. So the Chair is moderately stressed, the Moderator is the gregarious one who handles the brunt of high-schooler affections, and the ACs are the bored errand-runners.
There's the Admin people who get the grunt work of printing newspapers and providing various delegate services, and the Security people who walk around making sure the kids are generally not-a-nuisance to the hotel.
Finally, there's the Info folk. We have 2 basic tasks: Home Government Messages, and Expert Speeches. When a delegate in a committee has a question, say, "How do we, the Dominican Republic, feel about Israel signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty?" or "Does EU have a crisis rapid response system?" or "Does Bhutan have any structural adjustment programs?", they write this note addressed to their Home Government, which the ACs take and deliver to the Info room. There, we have at least 1 person assigned to each community who is responsible for answering them. You type them up, and sign it, say, "Mohamed ibn Yusuf, Deputy Foreign Minister". You fold them and stamp "CONFIDENTIAL", and suddenly, they look all official and stuff. Half the delegates actually believe these come from their home government.
The other thing that we do are expert speeches. Say, none of the delegates are discussing the topic from a specific point of view. Or maybe they're bogged down in definitions. Or maybe no one really knows anything about urban development. The chair writes to the primary info guy for his/her committee, who then writes up an expert speech. Then we find someone in Info to give that speech. Say, it may be a speech given by an ex-mercenary. It might be a speech given by the leader of Hamas. Or an econ professor from LSE, or a project coordinator from some NGO. Basically, you nab a willing fellow Info member who the Committee has never seen before, give them about 10 minutes to prep the speech, and then make them speechify before the delegates, and then handle Q&A. To make things cooler, sometimes we deliver expert speeches in a foreign language. This requires 2 people who are both fluent: one to deliver the message, and one to act as translator. All the delegate questions are handled that way, too, so it's pretty cool to watch. And of course, you must dress the role. So far, there's been a widow, a mercenary, an ex-human-trafficker... and tons of other stuff.
So what makes Info cool is that there's pretty much always something to do. When you're done answering your own Home Govt Messages (HGMs), you can help answer other people's. And there's always expert speeches to write or to give, depending on your predilection for public speaking and role playing. To make things even more interesting, Info also run several Crises every year. This is when Info people (Crisis Directors, or CDs) design a real-time Crisis to drop onto a committee. Spice up their lives and see how they respond to, say, transnational European terrorism. Or, say, the President of Gabon held hostage, or say, North Korea "testing" a nuke that reaches Guam. These things are all carefully planned ahead of time, so everything's more elaborate, with lots of articles and press releases and radio addresses, etc. They also generate a flood of Home Government Messages that everyone helps answer. And of course, Expert Speeches that aren't directed by the Chair. And even if everything's been done already, Info are the ones with the internet.
(Unless you run into the problem that we got Thursday night and part of Friday: the Internet was b0rken. Completely. So we basically spent many hours making stuff up. How many active troops does Canada have? Let's make it up! Are there mercenaries in Bhutan? Wait, where *is* Bhutan? Etc, etc.)
Okay, more in the morning.
1) it's really cool to live in the uber-executive floors of a posh downtown hotel. The shower spigots are these long things on a hinge, so that you can swing them up for showering, or shut them against the wall for non-showering. Why so elaborate? It's cause there's 2 showerheads on this thing. They're slanted toward each other so that you get an especially dense area of water. Since there's the hinge thing, these showerheads are also positioned directly above your head, with the water falling more or less down, instead of at an angle.
And the blankets are comfy.
2) Info is really the best aspect of MUNUC
So MUNUC has these different positions.
There's the ExCom (Executive Committee). They work really really hard and they basically run this thing. The few ExCom I've talked to have each had a total of 40 hours of sleep in the last 2 weeks. That's 3 hours of sleep per night. For 2 weeks. Talk about stress!
Then for every committee, there's the Chair, the Moderator, and the Assistant Chairs (AC). The Chair is the one who decides the 2 topics for the delegates to debate. S/he is the one who writes two 20-page topic papers in, like March or April, submit it, and maaaybe get picked as Chair for the following year. S/he would be the one who actually knows the topic pretty much inside-out. She keeps tabs on topic-related news, reads position papers, etc. The Moderator is the one who runs the committee sessions, basically calling for votes, keeping decorum, etc etc. The ACs are basically wee minions. Wee bored minions. They run around fetching stuff or delivering messages or screening notes. When they're not doing that, they're basically sitting in committee being bored. So the Chair is moderately stressed, the Moderator is the gregarious one who handles the brunt of high-schooler affections, and the ACs are the bored errand-runners.
There's the Admin people who get the grunt work of printing newspapers and providing various delegate services, and the Security people who walk around making sure the kids are generally not-a-nuisance to the hotel.
Finally, there's the Info folk. We have 2 basic tasks: Home Government Messages, and Expert Speeches. When a delegate in a committee has a question, say, "How do we, the Dominican Republic, feel about Israel signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty?" or "Does EU have a crisis rapid response system?" or "Does Bhutan have any structural adjustment programs?", they write this note addressed to their Home Government, which the ACs take and deliver to the Info room. There, we have at least 1 person assigned to each community who is responsible for answering them. You type them up, and sign it, say, "Mohamed ibn Yusuf, Deputy Foreign Minister". You fold them and stamp "CONFIDENTIAL", and suddenly, they look all official and stuff. Half the delegates actually believe these come from their home government.
The other thing that we do are expert speeches. Say, none of the delegates are discussing the topic from a specific point of view. Or maybe they're bogged down in definitions. Or maybe no one really knows anything about urban development. The chair writes to the primary info guy for his/her committee, who then writes up an expert speech. Then we find someone in Info to give that speech. Say, it may be a speech given by an ex-mercenary. It might be a speech given by the leader of Hamas. Or an econ professor from LSE, or a project coordinator from some NGO. Basically, you nab a willing fellow Info member who the Committee has never seen before, give them about 10 minutes to prep the speech, and then make them speechify before the delegates, and then handle Q&A. To make things cooler, sometimes we deliver expert speeches in a foreign language. This requires 2 people who are both fluent: one to deliver the message, and one to act as translator. All the delegate questions are handled that way, too, so it's pretty cool to watch. And of course, you must dress the role. So far, there's been a widow, a mercenary, an ex-human-trafficker... and tons of other stuff.
So what makes Info cool is that there's pretty much always something to do. When you're done answering your own Home Govt Messages (HGMs), you can help answer other people's. And there's always expert speeches to write or to give, depending on your predilection for public speaking and role playing. To make things even more interesting, Info also run several Crises every year. This is when Info people (Crisis Directors, or CDs) design a real-time Crisis to drop onto a committee. Spice up their lives and see how they respond to, say, transnational European terrorism. Or, say, the President of Gabon held hostage, or say, North Korea "testing" a nuke that reaches Guam. These things are all carefully planned ahead of time, so everything's more elaborate, with lots of articles and press releases and radio addresses, etc. They also generate a flood of Home Government Messages that everyone helps answer. And of course, Expert Speeches that aren't directed by the Chair. And even if everything's been done already, Info are the ones with the internet.
(Unless you run into the problem that we got Thursday night and part of Friday: the Internet was b0rken. Completely. So we basically spent many hours making stuff up. How many active troops does Canada have? Let's make it up! Are there mercenaries in Bhutan? Wait, where *is* Bhutan? Etc, etc.)
Okay, more in the morning.
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