The Haverford School ventures to the Model United Nations conference at Cornell University every year, but for Sixth Former Ryan Shams, this trip was different. It was his first time back at the Cornell conference in three years, and it would be the last of his Haverford Model UN career.
CMUNC, short for Cornell Model United Nations Conference, draws student delegates from schools across the nation to Cornell’s scenic campus in Ithaca, New York.
Haverford sent eight delegates this year, many new to Model UN. Having a group with less experience changed the group dynamic. Shams and Sixth Former Seth Virmani were the most experienced members, and they were expected to lead the delegates.
“This was the first time Seth and I were able to lead our group,” Shams said.
Model UN is a complex activity. Delegates are expected to walk into a committee room, represent a country they may have only researched a few weeks earlier, debate complex global issues, and hold their own against delegates from other schools.
For the newer members of the team, there was a steep learning curve. However, Shams and Virami did their best to aid the new delegates. For Shams, that responsibility was one of the highlights of the whole trip.
Outside the committee rooms, though, Shams’ favorite part had nothing to do with debate. It was just walking around Cornell’s campus with everyone. The university’s campus is hard to miss: rolling hills, gorges cutting through the landscape, and old stone buildings spread out across a lot of open space. Exploring the Cornell campus felt far removed from a typical school day, and for a group of students spending a few days there, that was a big part of the appeal.
“It was a new area for me,” Shams said.
It also made CMUNC stand out compared to the other external conferences Haverford attends: Ivy League Model United Nations Conference (ILMUNC) at the University of Pennsylvania, which runs almost entirely inside a downtown Philadelphia Marriott hotel.
CMUNC was also Shams’ last conference. Four years in Model UN, countless committee sessions, innumerable late nights researching foreign relations, and many speeches in front of rooms full of people you don’t know. It means watching yourself get better at something year after year, and for Shams, it also means finishing that run as one of the leaders of a group that was just getting started.
“I had a lot of great experiences and appreciated the last four years,” Shams said.