Model United Nations serves as an avenue for students to practice critical thinking, public speaking, and collaborating with people from all over the country.
This year, “FordsMUN” sent twelve delegates to the Ivy League Model UN Conference (ILMUNC) at the University of Pennsylvania. Three delegates—Fifth Formers Milan Varma, Mason Wiegand, and Ian Rosenzweig—won verbal commendations for their committees.
Wiegand attributes experience and teamwork to their success.
“I worked well with my partner Milan, and we ultimately won an award because of it,” Wiegand said. “This was my third conference, and the experience gained in the process of Model UN helped me immensely.”
“In my experience, success at a Model UN conference comes from a combination of knowledge, confidence, and the ability to build relationships.”
Ian Rosenzweig ’25
Rosenzweig agrees that teamwork and planning were key to his success.
“In my experience, success at a Model UN conference comes from a combination of knowledge, confidence, and the ability to build relationships,” Rosenzweig said. “Creating a successful resolution requires depth of content, a well-planned and well-delivered defense, and a cohesive group that exchanges ideas well.”
Sixth Form Co-leader David Stewart believes that the team’s success comes from well-thought-out decisions.
“The team this year was a lot more experienced than last year. Last year’s team was an 8-4 ratio of people that have attended two or more conferences versus ones who haven’t, this year was the opposite,” Stewart said.
ILMUNC is a challenging conference due to its size and renown. As a result, FordsMUN has always utilized it to challenge delegates.
“We’ve always wanted ILMUNC to be the testing ground for experienced delegates, and we were able to put this into action with our increased budget,” Stewart said. “We used the extra funding and time to prepare fully fresh delegates, while we brought the more experienced ones to ILMUNC and won a couple of awards.”
“The emphasis on awards brings out a cutthroat nature in people leading to unintelligent decision-making.”
Mason Wiegand ’25
Their success was no small feat.
“The emphasis on awards brings out a cutthroat nature in people leading to unintelligent decision-making,” Wiegand said. “Each committee has different challenge levels that require different things from the delegate.”
In addition to sending experienced delegates, FordsMUN also sent Fourth Formers Ranvir Gill and Ryan Shams.
“As a first-time delegate, I think we did pretty well,” Fourth Former Ranvir Gill said. “There were long committee sessions which were exhausting, but we met people from all over the world, which was pretty cool.”
Gill took away valuable experience from the conference.
“It was a little disappointing that we came short, but we still have countless opportunities to win more awards,” Gill said. “It was definitely a very good learning experience.”
For many, half of ILMUNC is the conference; the other half is the scenery.
“I like that it’s in the city,” Stewart said. “Reading Terminal Market is right down the street and you have a lot of random run-ins with people you know from other schools and other conferences.”
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