![On Tuesday, Jan. 28, Wayland Cares director J Verhoosky led a presentation on the importance of choosing to be vulnerable in conversations. Through various activities and experiments, the audience was instructed to confront how they approach risk taking and their comfort zones. “[My biggest takeaway was] make yourself available for other people and share things you might not share with other people to make them feel like they're in a safe environment,” junior Addison Voight said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/JLb1q3m4ZHvNAKYzv7c60kyyrrafzS8pJlYoJcoj.png)
Imagine you find yourself in a room full of people from all around the world, representing their own countries. The members of Switzerland are debating their trade regulations while members of Costa Rica are discussing human rights within their nation. Instead of being at the General Assembly Hall in New York where the United Nations (UN) actually meet, you’re simply at the Boston Marriott in Copley Square. Your job is to model how the UN meetings typically go.
Model UN is one of the many clubs offered at Wayland High School, and houses around 25 members. The group meets Tuesdays after school in history teacher Ellen Cheeseman-Meyers room and the meetings typically last an hour.
“It’s a really fun club where people get to be delegates from different nations and work together to create various resolutions for different problems,” senior Model UN member Hassan Rashid said.
From Friday, Feb. 7 to Sunday, Feb. 9, Model UN will be attending its 24th annual conference in Boston. Hosted by Boston University, the convention called “BosMUN” gathers Model UN clubs from all over the world. Over 1,800 delegates will be attending the conference.
“There are thousands of people from schools all over the world,” sophomore vice president Rhea Sethi said. “I think last year I met somebody from Asia.”
At the Boston Marriott, the high school students will depict what typically happens in a United Nations meeting, hence the name “Model” UN.
“Just like the real United Nations, it does get heated because people do try to go for their own self interests at times, and it’s really trying to push past that,” Rashid said.
Prior to the event, each group of delegates gets assigned a country and a topic. Before they hit the stage, they have to research the subject within their country. Sometimes the assignments can be easier to study than others, but it all comes down to the skill behind each delegate.
“We do a lot of practice speaking and giving speeches, because [it’s] important to be able to talk smoothly without “um’s” or “but’s,” [and be] able to represent a topic that you feel passionate about,” Sethi said.
Similar to the real United Nations meetings, the BosMUN convention is split into two parts, a discussion section and then an action section. In the discussion phase the countries make statements about problems or ideas they believe should be resolved. In the action section, resolutions and plans are made.
The prepping for the event starts as soon as the beginning of the year with practice debates and discussions. Then, farther into the year the specifics about BosMUN and training for it begins.
“We usually have a lot of announcements about conferences, then we usually go into more specific skills training,” Co-President senior Kanmani Sekhar said. “Then we practice mock-man committees, to practice delegation [amongst other things].”
Some emphasized that the club is not only a good extracurricular, but it also teaches students life lessons that they feel could be helpful in future. The conference helps kids practice public speaking skills and problem solving for the countries they’re representing.
“The biggest lesson [I’ve learned] would be knowing when to speak, what to focus on and knowing how to identify that,” said Sekhar.
