In-House Joint Crisis Conference Another NAMUN First
Natalie Workewych / NAMUN
In-house joint crisis committee provides training for NAMUN, UNSOC ahead of Conference
BY: Deena Allam
On January 17th, members of both the United Nations Society (UNSOC) — a University of Toronto Model UN club— and NAMUN’s Joint Crisis Committees participated in the first formal collaborative effort between the two student organizations, running the Edo Bay to Pearl Harbour Joint Crisis Committee simulation.
This year is filled with NAMUN firsts, and the training session held last week is no exception. Sammy Lau, Secretary General of NAMUN 2014 said the event was an attempt to form a collaborative environment between NAMUN and UNSOC.
“This year we’re going to be cooperating more and this is just one example of how both of our organizations are able to work together, where they can practice for NAMUN, and UNSOC can practice for our conferences,” said UNSOC president Angelo Gio Mateo.
This sentiment was further echoed by Jenn Eenslid, Director of Joint Crisis Committees for NAMUN 2014. She said that while there was a lot of work put into preparing her staff for this training session, “it was worth it so that they don’t go in dry to the actual conference, a problem we’ve had in the past.” The idea is that these kinds of joint training sessions will serve to make a smoother conference come February 20th.
The training session saw the UNSOC delegates and the NAMUN moderators divided between three rooms, the American delegation, the war room, and the Japanese delegation.
The Japanese room was adorned with an alarmingly accurate hand-drawn map of Japan courtesy of Hrayr Tumasyan, a fifth year Political Science, History, and East Asian studies student who “just likes staring at maps,” he said.
The atmosphere was one of excitement and anticipation since, as first year History and International Relations student Sevda Sparks said, “everybody knows what the United States is going to do but Japan is special and nobody knows what’s going on inside.”