On Saturday, Nov. 23, Seattle’s Renaissance Hotel saw Liberty’s Model United Nations club participating in the Northwest Model United Nations, a university conference competition.

Eleven Liberty students volunteered as pages and runners during several hours of the three day conference. They experienced the parliamentary procedures of a real UN meeting and exposed themselves to a variety of international issues being discussed in the world today, many of which the club has been covering this year.

The conference acted as a simulation of an actual UN meeting: each college student participating acted as an ambassador for a country by presenting the nation’s issues in front of the assembly and petitioning for resolutions in their countries’ favor.

“[The conference] got [Liberty’s model UN] feeling more confident about the club itself,” advisor Peter Kurtz said. “They got a really good understanding of what world issues we should be looking at, and I could tell that they were really reassured that we had been looking at many of the topics that were presented at the conference. It was really encouraging to the students.”

Liberty club members were involved in many of the different committees of a United Nations conference, including the Economic and Social Council, the Security Council, the Environment Program, and the General Assembly.

“[We] got a kick out of listening to moderated and un-moderated caucus and reading the notes the delegates were passing,” club president Akielly Hu said. “For me, the best part was working at the Security Council with Wyatt Waters, where it was a smaller, more informal but also more heated discussion. The people there were by far the best debaters and most entertaining to listen to.”

Liberty’s Model UN club will be participating in their own competition at Western Washington University in April: the Viking Model United Nations conference. Hosted by the WWU International Affairs Association, it is the largest secondary Model United Nations conference in the Pacific Northwest.

“Overall, [this conference] was a great experience to get a feel for what Model UN conferences are like, get prepared for our own in the spring, and spend some quality time in Seattle with our awesome members,” Hu said.