CVHS’s World Affairs Club attended and competed in HAMUN (Houston Area Model United Nations) on January 6 and 7, hosted at the University of Houston. 8 members from CVHS participated, with each student serving as a representative of a different nation.
At HAMUN, students are responsible for representing their assigned countries as realistically as possible. They spend weeks researching their country’s foreign policy, domestic affairs, and membership in international organizations. The goal is to effectively articulate their country’s interests as part of a larger United Nations committee and to create resolutions with allied nations highlighting their stance on a particular issue. Additionally, members are required to write a position paper prior to the conference that addresses a certain topic that will be discussed at HAMUN. The goal of these papers are to familiarize students with their country’s stance on certain issues as well as how they would navigate them.
For Senior Julian Nguyen, this meant doing lots of prep on his country – Saudi Arabia
“I wrote two position papers to be eligible for awards and you do a lot of research on your country. For me that consisted of going online and printing a bunch of sources and putting it in your binder and looking through it during the actual committee. It’s a two day committee so you have a lot of time to sit there and actually craft an argument,” he said.
Shanti Majumder, another member of the CVHS team, shared his unique experience at HAMUN, where he also represented Saudi Arabia. He discussed how he strategized his argument while also having to navigate limited speaking time due to the large number of participants in his committee.
“It was crowded, I had more than 200 members in my committee. It was hard to get speaking time. Me and Julian both represented Saudi Arabia… Saudi maybe doesn’t have the best human rights record but it was always great to take that perspective to try and gaslight the other members,” he noted.
After a two day event at UH, the delegates were granted awards. Nguyen won an award for ‘Outstanding delegate for UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)’
“Winning felt good. We stayed there really late the first day so winning an award made me feel very proud of myself,” Nguyen said.
Apart from researching and debating, Nguyen and Majumder both reflected on the different people they got to meet during their time at HAMUN.
“Meeting other delegates was a [highlight] of my experience. On my right I had someone who was a Marxist and on my left was an inexperienced delegate but a really chill guy. Some [delegates] are more chaotic and want to nuke the other countries, and some are more relaxed and would write a resolution with you so it’s really great to meet the different people, “Majumder said.
For those seeking debating opportunities, Nguyen comments that HAMUN is one of the most accessible forms of debate.
“…you can win an award and have a less serious approach to it, as long as you’ve put in effort and put in a decent amount of work…Taking your perspective as a country and using that to your advantage, even if you don’t agree with it – I think that’s a part of debate, and I think that’s what being a good delegate is,” he said.
