Written by Sofia Bohorquez
The MAST@FIU Model United Nations (MUN) team has been incredibly successful throughout its existence. Founding members taught themselves to participate in and lead a team. They’ve won “best school” at Miami-Dade College’s conference three years in a row, and countless participants have been awarded “best delegate.” However, according to Ari Barbella, secretary-general for the club, “MantaMUN is easily what we’re proudest of.”
MantaMUN 2020 was the first annual Model United Nations conference hosted by MAST@FIU. This conference had three committees: a general assembly, specialized, and crisis. Each of these operates differently, but the goal of each is to solve a specific problem where each student acts as a delegate for a nation or plays a character.
According to the MantaMUN website, delegates in the General Assembly were expected to “effectively regulate the use of biological and chemical weapons at the international level” as part of The Disarmament and International Security Committee. Delegates of the specialized committee represented nations who sought to solve the impending problem of a Zombie Apocalypse described in the novel World War Z. Finally, in the Crisis committee (as pictured above), delegates portrayed historical characters of the Haitian Revolution; each student’s goal was to further their ‘own’ interest in the Revolt in Saint-Domingue.
With a glowing review, in the form of an original song, “MantaMUN was so great, sooooo great” from Anissa Adams and a 63 person turnout, it is evident that there was excellent execution. However, the planning and effort prior to this past weekend were even more impressive. As previously mentioned, Barbella is the secretary-general for our MUN Conference. This role encompasses organizing the entire conference. He accounts, “I was elected in April of 2019 and began planning then.” First, he decided on his staff, shown below. I asked him how he made the difficult choices of which members to Chair, or manage, each committee. He claimed he made all choices based on “each staff members’ previous experience, preference, and personality.” He continued to explain that “the general assembly is traditional and professional, while specialized is typically more fun but still maintaining the formal style of UN debate, and finally, crisis is eccentric as chairs act out scenes and play characters, so my staff had to be creative.”
Once he established his staff, he guided them through the process of creating background guides and crafting their own committee framework, inviting other schools, and receiving approval from MAST@FIU’s administration. He dealt with the unforeseen circumstances that have affected virtually everything—COVID-19. “The virus forced us to move the conference online, so we chose to make attendance free in hopes that anyone would be able to participate regardless of how the pandemic affected their financial situation.”
Delegates provided great feedback about MantaMUN. Ari Barbella reflects on feedback “Our goal was to organize a conference that was conducive to first-time delegates as much of a learning experience as a competitive one, and based on feedback, we did that. I couldn’t be more proud.”
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