Of MUN, MUNners, and MUNning - FISMUN 8.0, a committee to remember

Here's a little background about what I'm going to write about. When I wanted to join the MUN club, I was just in grade six. In our school, you need to have written a test to enter it, if you recollect. And with the (negligible) general knowledge I had back then, I really wonder how I got in in the first place! The MUN club was my first preference, followed by another I don't recall, and my third and last club preference was for the gardening club. The test we would have to write was scheduled for the lunch break. I had the nerves right before - what if I don't clear it and get into the gardening club?! When everyone else enjoys their club sessions indoors, we would be out there, shovelling the dirt in the humid, mosquito-infested garden! I brushed that thought away and just walked into the classroom (without eating my lunch which is nothing surprising). The rest, as they say, is history. I probably got three questions whose answers I was sure about, and well, the rest... But there was this one question I did answer and well at that, too - the last one, which read 'Why do you want to join the MUN club?' Being someone who writes, and being blessed with the skill of elongating just a sentence into pages and pages (exaggerations and synonyms and descriptions galore), I wrote an entire paragraph rather than just the two lines which were expected. 

Well, it turned out, I actually got into the club, and I was relieved. Little did I know what it would be like! 

The chairs (chairpeople) in the club dived into starting a new committee and all the terms on the board were revolving around my head and refusing to enter! ROP? GSL?? MODCAUC???! Is this a code language, or what?! That was my first impression. And sadly, that went south! I probably ended up asking myself why I wasn't in... the gardening club? I did not even talk in committee for the rest of the year! Well, except the last club session, that is.

The last club session of the year was probably in late January, and we had a crisis agenda - increasing tensions between India and Pakistan, and how to get them to recede. I was in the Pakistani bloc! By past experience (and a little bit of intuition) I knew that being the Head of Media is a comparatively... safe portfolio. No battleguns, no Siachens, no terrorists, not even unemployment rate to worry about - just newspaper headlines. And that was the first time I ever gave a speech in a committee. I ended up actually enjoying the committee. And for once, I left the room, not with a sense of relief that I wasn't recognised, but with an air of satisfaction that I could actually participate in committee and understand what was going on. 

Well, that led me to my first MUN, FISMUN 6.0 (and an abysmal job which can be excused due to my naïve and exuberant self as the delegate of Turkey). This was probably the 'turning point'. There was no looking back after that - I loved MUNning already and I would participate in every committee I could! That led me to grade seven, and more club sessions, and another FISMUN (7.0), and even more club sessions. It drove me mad when the school compromised on the club sessions for anything - and imagine my face when we didn't have clubs for three months - three whole months - because of the Annual Day! I sure didn't look forward to it! Not to mention the three months after the Annual day when we didn't have clubs. No clubs from late September till the end of the year, with the exception of two :( noooo!

And finally, after months, I heard some good news when it was announced that the FISMUN would be held from March 19th. The MUN club chairs held an orientation to let people know about what MUNning is all about. A PowerPoint presentation - looking nothing short of professional - was displayed. Then the obvious question - 'How many want to participate in the MUN this time?' Atleast eighty percent of the room had its hands up! 

And then came the time to register for the committees. The FISMUN website was sent out, and it got a good deal of registrations, too. We were all set for the MUN, but something else was in store. Covid-19 locked us all up at home, and the school was shut down - nearly fifteen days early, if not more. And it turned out, the MUN was postponed to the last week of May. 

I had registered for the fast-paced, war-based crisis committee - a scourge of even my first chair! I was taught that crisis committees were scary and dangerous and that they would trample delegates under their speeding wheels - which is true, but to a certain extent only. I personally had the same bias for long, but I shook it off after discovering how much I loved it because of its action-packed nature which involves every delegate to the fullest. And having known only historical crises, this futuristic one between the two rising nuclear powers of the world - USA and DPRK - I was just thrilled and was eagerly looking forward to it. I was supposed to be the defence minister of the United States.

 Being a delegate who had never faced the press - in FISMUN 6.0 because of my insignificance and in FISMUN 7.0 because of my calculated and if anything, cautious moves - I was always apprehensive about it. In my first MUN, the otherwise composed and peaceful chairs kicked the door open with a loud wham, yelling as they stormed in, 'Delegates, we now have the press session!' What followed was brutal! The press session felt like an execution - entertaining for the spectators to watch and brutal for the ones who stand knowing they're next up there! 

Keeping that in mind, I decided to finish my research in April-May itself. I plotted and plotted and finally chalked out a plan. I even tried to get ideas from the other delegates to add on to it, though their response wasn't really encouraging, because, well, there was none at all. I shrugged it off, thought they'd be serious anyway when the MUN would be atleast two weeks away, and once I thought I was decently prepared, I just spent the rest of my lockdown in painting, needlework, music, art, poetry, and writing in Sanskrit, because I love doing those things! After months of school work, exams, editing the school magazine in every lunch break and free period I could get, it was really refreshing, and much needed too.

P.S. Fun fact - I spent around SIX HOURS collectively on two consecutive days making this custom map for the MUN.

Then came the second week of May and there was still no prospect of the MUN, looking at the coronavirus case figures. Even the chairs were still deliberating on what was supposed to be done. And then came the big whammy, in the last week - no, the last day - of May. 

The MUN would be conducted online in about a week and all the participants were to confirm their attendance.

LITERALLY ME when the crisis was dissolved. Whyyyy?! You don't deserve to be dissolved, dear crisis committee!

We NEED the 2025 commission again! #GetTheCrisisBackPlease

Now, there was no reason this should have been a big whammy. I had looked forward to FISMUN 8.0 since probably November 2019, because club sessions would be once-in-a-blue-moon afterwards! But it turned out, that even when I asked for help at that point of time to decide on a course of action in the crisis, help was little, and only from the chair. Then I began to wonder if the others even realised that the MUN was in a week. And then I wondered if they even knew that there was a MUN at all. 

Well... what I wondered about didn't come to nothing. The participation response in the crisis committee was hopeless - three delegates out of ten sent their confirmatory mails. For me, this meant that there was complete confusion for the next three days and a wandering mind for the next three nights. I would probably have to be the only one in my bloc, because the other two delegates were of the DPRK bloc. Otherwise, I would've to take a U-turn in my research because we would be in the non-crisis instead. And thus, two days before the MUN, the three of us were moved to the non-crisis instead. 

So yes, I went from the Arctic to the Antarctic. From USA, the land of freedom and opportunity, I went to Yemen - yes, Yemen. I probably  couldn't even point it on the map! Fortunately, I had atleast seen the background guide of the non-crisis committee - about the commination of interventionism - when I thought I was receiving the 'wrong' mails because I was in the crisis! Besides, I was also tutoring many of my classmates who never went to a MUN ("you see, I don't know much about this agenda myself, but consider Syria, where intervention by Turkey, Russia...") 

In the committee, one thing every delegate is to be absolutely sure about is if what (s)he speaks abides by the country's stance, because otherwise, the press, remember! And I desperately had to do something about this country, entangled in its own puppet-strings - a food crisis and civil war! So I sent the chairs a page-long communiqué (whose fate I do not know). The committee went smoothly, atleast until the press session!

I somehow expected that I would be pressed, considering that I stressed a lot on transparency. Taking into account that Yemen itself has a corruption ranking of 177 out of 180 countries, that point...! But my mother told me to not lose my composure in press and that everything would be fine. It worked like magic.

I was pressed on both the days of committee. Other than the press, everything was perfectly on-track. But it was definitely an experience of a lifetime, to be pressed like never before and to still face it! 

We had resolutions revised by the entire committee in just minutes! What followed was worth remembering too - the question and answer session. 

The question and answer session is like seeing the world through a microscope. The most insignificant squiggle can be a big deal. Every word counts in it! All the unimaginable loopholes fall out! I think that's the best part about MUNning - there's always something to take back, and that's more valuable than anything else. And since I was a little lucky, I took back a special mention, too. It meant a lot, because I never received any awards before as a MUNner! 

MUNning teaches you to work for what's good while being committed to it, hope for the best, cope with the worst, and never doubt yourself even when everyone else does. More than anything, it leaves you with the experiences of a lifetime. And that's why I love it!

(Dedicated to the chairs, the press and all the delegates who made it till the end)