The Wheaton Model United Nations (MUN) team hosted a high school conference on the Wheaton College campus on April 6. The WheaMUN Conference was attended by four different high schools including Gould Academy (ME), Rocky Hill School (RI), Foxborough High School (MA) and Weston High School (CT).

The opening ceremony began with a couple of speakers including Melanie McCarthy and Kate McCaffrey. Melanie McCarthy is the founder and executive director of Nosapo, which is a nonprofit organization that provides thoroughly researched, culturally sensitive, demographic-specific human rights, plus health and educational resources.

After the opening ceremony, the students split up into two different committees depending on what procedure they thrive in the most. Some participated in a General Assembly and the others participated in a Crisis committee.

In each committee, the delegates were challenged to improve their own speech and debate skills, strategy and problem-solving. The Wheaton MUN team members got to run the entire conference and gained experience in the long hours of time and amount of work that is put into hosting such a conference.

The WheaMUN Secretary-General, Joe Perez ’20, described the event as being a great success. “We are really happy with how everything went this year. We received very positive feedback from delegates and advisors alike and are well on our way toward growing our conferences reputation on the high school circuit!” said Perez after the conference had come to a close with a speech given by Dennis Hanno. This year was the second WheaMUN ever put on by Wheaton and will continue to grow into a conference with a good reputation among high school MUN teams.

While members of the MUN team stayed on campus to help run WheaMUN, Mount Holyoke College hosted a conference that a few of the delegates of the Wheaton MUN team attended. Those students represented Wheaton with pride! Jeremy Holt ’20 won an Outstanding Delegate award, Mae Flibotte ’22 and Kiran Pfitzner ’21 both won Honorable Mention awards. Overall, the Wheaton MUN team had a very busy and exciting weekend.