Three dozen students from Lawrence and Free State high schools traveled Feb. 6-9 to Chicago to participate in the University of Chicago’s 15th Model United Nations.

Students were assigned a nation to represent and acted as delegates making important decisions on different subjects during the four-day conference at downtown Chicago’s Palmar House Hilton. Topics covered ranged from the production of land mines to hyperinflation in African economies to the dangers of tobacco.

LHS students were assigned the nation of Jamaica, while Free State’s group represented both Austria and the African nation of Mali.

The substance of the meetings was, according to Free State junior Bryan Maygers, “Nothing like junior high Model U.N.”

He said in junior high, students did not take the position of their countries seriously. In Chicago, most took it seriously.

Even the delegates who were not in Model U.N. in junior high would agree with Maygers on the latter point. Meetings followed parliamentary procedure, so delegates had to communicate through the passing of notes while a delegate gave a speech.

Some notes being passed by pages suggested amendments to resolutions or critiques of comments, but others were along the lines of, “Hey Mali, you look just like a guy from the Strokes, and that’s not a bad thing! — Zambia.”

Of every committee at the conference, all 2,500 delegates saw at least one resolution pass in their committee. For so many committees to all pass a resolution was a huge success that would be unheard of in the real United Nations.

Perhaps that success should provide hope for a more efficient next generation of world leaders, or maybe it represented a lure for the present ones — an all-convention delegate dance is always an incentive to finish sooner.

— Teen Advisory Board member Caleb Powers is a junior at Free State High School.