In the 2013-2014 school year, Model United Nations made its debut at Bellarmine Preparatory school. Beginning with Ken Brown’s AP World History students, Bellarmine’s Model UN club (BellarMUN) has grown exponentially since its conception.

BellarMUN is now recognized by other Model UN clubs and programs and plays an essential role in hosting PACMUN, a student-organized Model UN conference. For the 2015-2016 school year, the club has already hit the road attending and preparing for conferences both near and far.

Junior Connor Simmons states, “Model UN is about international diplomacy and building skills such as public speaking and resolution writing.” More generally, Model UN is a way for students to expose themselves to multiple perspectives on trending world issues such as nuclear energy, refugee asylums and more.
As sophomore Mac Gibbens describes it, “Model UN is about dressing up in fancy clothes, and going to a hotel and arguing for three days about international topics.”

Model UN is one of the closest things to a debate club that Bellarmine offers, but it is not a debate club. Brown said, “What I like about Model UN is that it is about consensus building instead of about debating and arguing. It’s about trying to come up with sensible solutions to real problems… Ultimately, [the students] are having to work on finding common ground, and I think, especially in today’s global climate, finding common ground is really an essential skill for them to learn.” According to the student participants of Model UN, the program does exactly that.

Senior Earl Julian Valasco, the club’s secretary of internal affairs, said, “I love that I get to meet new people and work with other people who have different values and different opinions than me and just trying to find common ground. It’s just fun to not only debate, but to be able to find that compromise that works for everybody.”
According to senior Lorilyn Ignao, the club’s the secretary of logistics, Model UN is much more than simply an educational club. She states, “I like that it’s not a one-sided thing. You get your academic experience, but you also get your social, and then underlyingly, you also develop skills that really do help in the long run like public speaking and inter-person communication, not just speeches, but like talking one-on-one.”

Ignao informs students hesitant to participate in the club that it is not only meant for those who enjoy public speaking. She advises, “Really know your position, like your country and what they’re stance is on the topic that is being discussed, because even if you don’t want to go up and make a speech, there are other times when you can be informal and say ‘hey’ to find a country that has a similar stance.”
Model UN is a continually growing club. As seniors leave, however, the end of each Model UN season is left with significantly lower head counts. Therefore, the club is looking for more underclassmen, or students in general, to try it out.

Simmons states, “Model UN is a really great club and we’re looking for especially freshmen, sophomores and juniors to join because a lot of our seniors are graduating.”

Although Model UN has come a long way at Bellarmine since its beginnings, there is still much more room for growth. Brown lays out the next step for the club. He said, “I would like to see Model UN become a program, much like robotics, with built-in fundraising mechanisms to raise enough money to be able to send more students to conferences who might not be able to afford the entrance fees…Most of the conferences, because they involve a hotel stay, they cost money, and it’s sad for me to think that some students who would benefit from Model UN might not be able to do it because they can’t afford it.” As the club attracts increasing attention and more students join, becoming a program may be in BellarMUN’s near future.

If you are thinking about getting involved with Model UN, Brown encourages you to “see the Model UN board outside A-11, come see [him], talk to somebody else who is in Model UN and just go to one conference to see what [you] think.”