JHUMUNC

Name: Tanmay Gokhale (read my profile)

Year: Class of 2009

Previous Guest Blog entries:

April 24, 2006 - Life as a Hopkins BME, click here.

November 21, 2006 - Life as a Hopkins BME: The Sequel, click here.

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A few weeks ago, a group of Hopkins students hosted the Johns Hopkins University Model UN Conference at the Baltimore Convention Center. Each  year, over 800 high school students come to Baltimore to represent different countries and debate different international political issues. While Model UN has absolutely nothing to do with my BME major (which I’ve blogged about before), it’s something that I’ve always really enjoyed.

In high school, my school attended the Houston Area Model UN Conference and I had a great time each year representing countries like Honduras, Syria and the United States. When I heard that Hopkins hosted a conference each year, I knew I had to join and experience Model UN from the other side of the gavel.

My freshman year, I was crisis director for Security Council, so I got to create all sorts of crazy crisis to throw at the delegates. From the bombing of an embassy and the declaration of global war to the actual kidnapping of the “ambassador” from Russia, it was a lot of fun brainstorming what we could do next while always trying to think one step ahead of the delegates. After my experience freshman year, I decided I wanted to get more involved in Model UN and I applied for a position on the Secretariat.

The JHUMUNC Secretariat and Directorate is a group of 15 students who lead the entire conference, and as a sophomore, I was selected by our Secretary-General to be the Undersecretary-General of Operations. This meant I was responsible for all logistical aspects of the conference, from coordinating the location, to making sure committees had everything they needed, to keeping track of what was going on all times.  While many of you may have, like me, participated in Model UN in high school, you really have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes until you’re actually there.

The work into planning the conference began as far back as last summer when we secured a location for this year’s conference and began talking to different vendors about getting all the supplies we need. While other Dias staff members were coming up with debate topics and writing background guides to help delegates prepare for the conference, the Secretariat and Directorate were planning out the details of the conference. I was responsible for managing the Operations Room, which is essentially the nerve center of the conference where everything is run out of. During the conference itself, while people like Julia were chairing different committees (see her blog entry), the Secretariat and Directorate were in the Operations Room and kept the conference flowing smoothly, making sure rooms were comfortable, delegates were in committee and things were going according to plan. Over the 96 hours of the conference, a couple of other Secretariat members and I managed to pull through on only 10 hours of sleep.

One of the best parts of our conference is running the Midnight Crisis. Each year, the delegates from a few select committees are woken up in the middle of the night, told that there’s a crisis that needs their attention, and brought down to the convention center. This year, the crisis that we ran involved multiple committees working together to deal with an international issue, so it was a lot of fun! I was part of the team that went pounding on doors at 2am to wake up the delegates and bring them to the convention center, and the crisis this year lasted till past 7am. The different committees had to negotiate with each other to come up with a solution that everyone could agree with.

Overall, Model UN has been a great experience for me. Even though I’m a BME major, I’ve always  been interested in international politics, which is one of the reasons I came to Hopkins. Though a lot of my time is spent in engineering and science classes, I’ve still had the opportunity to take Political Science  and French classes and participate in activities like Model UN. If any of you were at this year’s conference, I’d love to hear from you – leave a comment below!