Welcome to Students Incorporated, a podcast where we dive into relevant topics and issues
related to the world of business, technology, education and design.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
Episodes include student conversations, interviews with thought leaders, and inspirational stories
with an international flavor.
This podcast is created and produced with the help of students from the International
Community School of Bangkok.
In today's episode, we will be discussing Model United Nations, which is a way for students
to actively learn about international relations, diplomacy, debate, and the UN.
My name is Kush Natani, and I'll be your host today.
You may know me as the tech engineer for the Students Incorporated podcast, but I'm also
an active member and future president of the Model United Nations club.
So Mr. Jason and I switch roles for this episode.
But you'll be happy to know that Lion is our co-host, who also happens to be another
member of the club.
Joining us today will be Mr. Dayton, our school club advisor, Jeremy, the club president,
and Karis, the vice president.
Today's topics will include discussions about the United Nations itself, how Model UN works,
and a few upcoming conferences organized entirely by students.
Before we get started, here's the quote of the day.
Our quote of the day comes from Doug Hummershold, the second ever Secretary General of the United
Nations, which says, the UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but rather to save
humanity from hell.
The Secretary General of the United Nations is essentially the CEO or the boss of the
UN, voted into power by the member states.
It must be someone who is politically experienced and morally astute, and up to the diplomatic
standard that's required to facilitate conversations between 193 member states who have very different
viewpoints and opinions.
There have been nine Secretary Generals so far, with the newest one being Antonio Gutierrez,
elected in 2021.
Here are some headline news from around the world.
The top movies of 2022 came out as follows.
Number one, Avatar, Way of Water, earned a total of approximately 2.1 billion US dollars.
Three more Avatar movies are planned for 2024, 2026, and 2028.
The first Avatar movie released in 2009 and earned 2.92 billion US dollars, making it
the highest grossing film of all time.
Number two, Top Gun Maverick, earned 1.4 billion US dollars.
The first Top Gun film released in 1986 and made a total of $357 million globally.
Number three, Jurassic World Dominion, with $1 billion.
It was the seventh film in the Jurassic film series.
The very first Jurassic Park movie came out in 1993 and grossed over $914 million worldwide,
surpassing Spielberg's ET, the extraterrestrial.
Number four, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, with $955 million.
The first Doctor Strange film was released in 2016 and earned $677 million globally.
Number five, Minions, The Rise of Gru, made $939 million.
The first Minions film, which released in 2015, earned approximately 1.16 billion.
A fun fact about all of these movies is that they're all sequels.
All right, now from movies and business to sports and business, which by the way, will
be one of our upcoming episodes.
JD Sports is claiming that 10 million of its customers are now at risk due to a large-scale
cyber attack that happened at the company.
Customers' private information from around 2018 to 2020 could have been accessed by hackers.
JD Sports is trying to fix the problem and is contacting its customers to inform them
of the massive issue.
Moving on to the weather in Thailand, lately, the air quality has really been dropping.
The weather has gotten colder, but the air has gotten worse.
That's why it's recommended that even though the weather is cool, don't spend too much
time outside or it could hurt your health.
If you are outside, feel free to wear masks to protect yourself.
Let's begin the first part of the episode.
Can you please introduce yourselves and say how long you have been a part of MUN?
I'll start.
My name is Mr. Dayton, and I've been a part of MUN for probably around 16 years.
Okay.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Karris.
I'm a senior this year, and I've been part of MUN since freshman year, so this is my
fourth year.
Okay.
My name is Jeremy.
I'm sectioning ICS-9 as well as the current club president.
I've been in MUN for four years, so that'll be starting from my freshman year coming up
to senior year.
Can you also tell us what MUN is and what students are tasked with doing?
I'll take that.
Model United Nations is an incredible venue for students to participate in, to share what
they know about the world, and really to interact with other students to learn what their capabilities
are.
It's been a fantastic avenue for students at ICS to be able to just project their worldview
and to share their views with others.
In more simple terms, we're basically role-playing countries to solve current world problems.
Anything from the current Ukraine war all the way to something fantastical like the
French Revolution, for instance.
Our next question is, why should people join ICS MUN and participate in conferences?
I think for me it's a fun way to meet new people.
You're meeting people across international schools and even Thai schools sometimes across
Thailand, and so you're able to meet like-minded people and bond over topics that you're interested
in.
At ICS MUN, we have a bunch of different schools coming, and I think it's a great opportunity
to improve your social skills.
Yeah, apart from your social skills, they can actually really help with public speaking
if that's one of your weak suits.
So for me personally, when I was just coming into high school, I was a really timid person.
I really didn't engage much with my fellow students.
And to be honest, going to an international conference and engaging with hundreds of new
people, that was something that I really couldn't think about or really even couldn't imagine.
One guy, a senior from at that time, I think, a junior at that time, introduced me to MUN
and actually got me engaged with it.
It was a great opportunity for me to actually develop more social skills, go talk to more
people and actually share my opinions on international affairs and current world issues.
Not just social skills, let's talk about leadership skills.
You two have developed some amazing leadership skills, and I'm really proud of you guys,
how you've been able to share this vision of what is ICS MUN with the current students.
We've grown in leaps and bounds in spite of the COVID season.
For someone who is interested in joining MUN, what are the fundamental skills and characteristics
they should strive to have?
I think a huge part of MUN is just the desire to learn about current events and the desire
to learn something new, because a lot of the times people don't want to join MUN because
they have to learn a lot of things, whether it's procedure or how does a conference run.
It's very difficult sometimes for a lot of people to grasp what we're actually doing.
And so I think a fundamental skill is just the desire to participate, to have fun and
to speak with confidence.
Yeah, they should definitely strive to have those.
Apart from that innate desire to learn, I think you shouldn't really come in with ideas
of diplomacy and something that you can do is basing everything you do off of the mindset
that you're there to change the world and whatever you're going to do is something that
you can benefit the entire global community.
So it's less about, oh, I'm better than you, whatever you say is wrong and what about I
say is right.
And it's more about how can you and I, countries with totally opposing viewpoints sometimes,
and work together to essentially resolve conflicts or make the world a better place by eliminating
say poverty or conflicts in the world.
Those are excellent reasons.
I think also a growth mindset is something that everyone in our club has and really seeks
to push forward.
And if you're willing to learn from others, if you're willing to learn from your mistakes
and put yourself out there, you're going to grow.
We don't have this mindset of perfection and like, oh, I'm going to be best delegate in
the very first conference when I'm a freshman, but we're scared.
We're like, oh my, this is so scary.
And I don't know what I'm going to do.
But you grow when you overcome your fears by just putting one foot in front of the other.
And maybe you only talk once your first conference, but after that you gain confidence, you gain
a sense of I can do it and then you do.
And so it's great for anyone with a growth mindset.
I think that's a beautiful part about MUN is that everyone has been there at their first
conference, not speaking much or not having any experience or not being confident in what
they're going to say.
And I think the best part is that since everyone has been there, everyone's super happy.
They're even there to try MUN in the first place.
And by being there, you just know that you're going to get better in the future.
Everyone who you see that's really eloquent at their speaking ability or leading the conference
as a chair, as a secretariat member, or an organizing committee member, they all understand
the first steps are the hardest steps to take.
So I feel like the idea that people are going to help you no matter what, they're not there
to reprimand you for being bad.
That's just not there in MUN because everybody understands that if it's your first conference
or if it's your first, second, third, even fourth conference and you're kind of shy,
it's still a learning experience.
Everybody is going through the steps of learning what MUN is and learning how diplomacy works
together.
Our next question is for Mr. Dayton specifically.
Why did you start up the MUN club at ICS in the first place?
This is pretty funny.
I didn't have a clue what Model United Nation was when I first was a teacher here at ICS.
It wasn't really a thing in my culture when I was growing up, in like an 80s kid.
We didn't do that kind of thing.
We weren't really on our radar.
But one of the students who came from another school, his name was Ace Yu, and he was absolutely
passionate about United Nations.
Now before that, I'd gotten emails about other, every now and then, oh, you're the social
studies teacher.
Are you interested in doing MUN?
And I'm like, well, I'll ask my students, and since I had no clue about what it was,
I couldn't really persuade any students to join MUN.
I was like, there's this thing called MUN.
You want to join?
And they're like, uh, yeah, maybe.
And no, nothing ever happens, you know.
But Ace knew a lot about it.
He had done it his freshman year at another school.
And when he came in, I'm like, yeah, let's do that.
So it began as a student led organization and it still is now.
They are the leaders.
I think at the beginning of this year, we weren't even confident that we had 10 members
that fully came to our meetings, but now we have actually 30 plus members who are active.
And I think a huge part in growing our conferences this year or in growing our attendance was
just because COVID almost was non-existent this year, being that we were able to go to
so many conferences.
And that really is the best part about MUN is the community and meeting other people
is what brings people joy about going to MUN conferences.
And so these past few years when we didn't have any conferences, it was harder for sophomores
and freshmen now to understand what MUN was.
But now that we've been able to go to more conferences this year, I'm very happy that
all four of us here have been able to grow MUN into what it is now.
This question is for Jeremy.
We heard from a certain source that you've been to over 22 conferences, winning numerous
awards and accolades.
What keeps you coming back to MUN again and again?
Well, I feel like that's kind of a complicated question.
There's not like one single answer I can give.
I think it's divided into like three, four parts maybe.
So of course there's like the thrill of debate and like the adrenaline that gets you going
after like you make like a speech or like the anxiety or like the excitement that gets
you going about like, oh, what's he going to say about this?
Or what is Pakistan going to say about like Kashmir or something like that?
And like engaging with debate or you know, that's already like a part of what I enjoy.
I love public speaking.
I love debate.
Or also, I think another aspect is that like really community, like the community in MUN
and meeting new people, like the social aspect of MUN is another factor that really brings
us together.
Like in the recent Tamasat MUN conference, we got to meet like all these university students
and like the professors, even MFA, like Ministry of Foreign Affairs, like officials that came
to the conference and like shared different aspects about how their job works and the
community especially, like how we're all thriving to like starting to build upon each other
and work together to grow as a community and how we as the future generation are fixing
the previous generation's mistakes or even improving upon them to make where we live
a better place in general.
I feel like that's why I go back to MUN even after 22 conferences.
Kheris, what do you enjoy about MUN?
I definitely do not have not attended as many conferences as Jeremy.
He's just honestly a little crazy, not gonna lie, but I appreciate that crazy because it's
what drives our clubs and definitely I feel like for me, it's the excitement that has
kept me going, attending MUN conferences throughout the years.
And I think it's the thrill of just, you know, having to wake up early in the morning and
go to school you've never been to, meeting new people and having to give a speech a minute
or like 30 minutes after you walk into the school.
And I think that excitement has really created a great community of friends that I still
keep in touch with to this day.
This question goes for all of you.
What has been your favorite moment in any conference and do you also have any embarrassing
moments?
One of my favorite moments was I took a group of ICS students.
It was kind of an impromptu trip to Singapore, to NTU.
It was a college level conference.
Now our students got into this conference solely based on writing that they submitted.
And so their position papers were well written.
The students did an excellent job.
So the college didn't really even have an idea that they were high school students.
And so here we were with some of the men there, full beards.
They looked like Mr. Sean.
I saw like four or five of them.
They were senior pre-med majors.
And here we have ninth graders debating with them.
And wow, it was like white belts fighting black belts the first day.
We were getting creamed.
Jeremy was saying that, you know, this is where we're trying to work together.
Well, some of these guys, they try to destroy you.
And one of my students, I just never forget, was in tears because two delegates and they
were law majors.
I don't know how they have the conscience to do this.
He was a 10th grader.
They tricked him.
He was a delegate of the United States into insulting another country.
And then he had to make a public apology to everyone.
It was pretty bad and he was just like, I don't know if I can do this.
But that night he was up till maybe 3 a.m. or so preparing.
And the next day he took them to court.
Like it was amazing.
He fought back and won everyone's respect in that conference room.
That was a really interesting experience.
I think the university conferences outside of Thailand have really like a competitive
mindset, especially those set in Malaysia or even Indonesia, I think, have a really
intense setting that it's kind of intimidating often to go against those students.
Changing the mood, though, in another conference I've been to, it was in Jakarta, but it was
a high school level conference.
We were in United Nations General Assembly.
On the topic, I think, was Russia decided to militarize the moon by building a missile
base.
And my solution to that was that even though there's like a treaty that we can't really
own space or like militarize space, we should totally go against that.
I was Israel.
We should totally go against that and instead make the moon like a free market economy.
So we would allocate, we would divide the entire territory of the moon into 196 pieces,
delegate them off to each country in the United Nations.
And then those things, those little territories could be traded as part of national security
deals to either procure funds or to procure resources from those other countries.
And the best part is that it was called Moonstalks or Moonstalks.
And then that resolution actually passed in General Assembly.
So in the United Nations, we decided to capitalize the moon and sell pieces of it off to different
countries.
I don't know if you guys know Guy, but he's pretty famous around MU and conferences.
He graduated, oh, that's true, infamous.
He graduated class of 2021, but he was in one of my committees for BKKMUN in 2020.
And you're part of the European Union and he had, he was a delegate of Italy.
And so this story is, I feel like I've heard this story from 20 different people talking
about how funny it was.
But it was even cooler in the moment because he had brought in raw pasta and while he was
making his speeches, he was chewing on the pasta.
And everyone, the thing with Guy is everyone is so confused as to what he was doing, but
it's the funniest thing in the moment.
So that's definitely one of my favorite moments.
From that conference that Karis was talking about BKKMUN 2020, that was personally Mine
and Lion's first conference that we'd ever been to.
And from that, not just that experience, but other experiences from that conference, I
think both of us realized that it was a thing that we wanted to stick with.
I specialize in doing historical committees, which is essentially we go back in time and
instead of being countries, you play as historical people.
And for Thai MU and last year in 2022, I was in the group called the Normans.
We were going against others.
Our win condition was that we needed to invade their city and take it down.
And the other team's win condition was that they needed to stop us from taking it down.
My team was doing so well that in the end, the other team decided to burn down their
own city.
So technically, their win condition was met because they didn't let us attack them.
But our win condition was also met because technically the city was burned down.
And in the end, it was called a draw, even though very clearly I feel like we should
have won.
I am also an avid MUNer and my favorite experience, I have two actually.
One was the first one at the end of my first conference.
Both of our chairs told Kush and I that we are quite possibly the worst MUN people they've
ever met.
That was quite the humbling experience.
The second experience I have is a very recent one at BKK Month 2023.
I was a US Senator and what US Senators do, a very typical thing for a US Senator is get
arrested.
You take FBI to a dig up petty crimes on another Senator, which led me to get arrested by Jeremy.
And that was a very funny thing.
So we had to like just actually, so me and somebody else, I think one of the Secretariat,
we entered the room yelling FBI open up just because he was trying to use the FBI for personal
gains.
And then we had to just drag him out of the room.
Like we didn't have handcuffs, like obviously, like who would have handcuffs?
But we just dragged him out of the room and he was screaming.
And with that, we'll be right back after a short PSA.
The UN is an international organization that was created in 1945 after the events of World
War II.
It has 193 member states and six official languages.
It was created after the League of Nations was disbanded.
Its stated goals are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations
among nations, achieve international cooperation and be a center for harmonizing the actions
of nations.
Some of the challenges the UN is facing today are fighting corruption in Honduras, solid
fighting Yemen's truce, restoring trust in UN peacekeeping in the DR Congo and supporting
the peacekeeping mission in Mali.
We are now back with part two of our Model United Nations episode.
This part of the episode will be about the upcoming conferences in the next few months.
Our first question is, what is your specific role for both the Thai MUN and the ICS MUN
conferences?
So I am one of the Secretariat Generals for Thai Model United Nations.
So essentially what my job is, is that I need to organize the entire conference as Thai
Model United Nations and ICS Model United Nations are both like student run organizations.
So me and my team of members is the ones who are actually organizing stuff.
So coming up with like different topics, like ordering gavels, designing like designing
the little placards, designing the little notepads, so on so forth.
I think Kush designed a lot of the Instagram post stuff on for Thai Model United Nations
and we really thank you for that.
Apart from that, we did a lot of meetings with Mr. Wood, who is the director for Thai
Model United Nations.
And we do a lot of emailing to delegates, chairs, other advisors about, you know, if
there's like an email that doesn't get sent to like the delegates, we need to follow up
on that.
And basically like all the behind the scenes work so we can get the awesome conferences
happening.
Kush and I are actually both Thai MUN chairs as well.
Although Kush also does other things for Thai MUN, which maybe he can explain later.
But for ICS MUN, we are both parliamentarians, meaning that we are under technically Sharvish
and Jeremy.
But we do a lot of work such as running the Instagram, designing the notepads, etc.
And I also wanted to shout out Tasha and Jaycee, who are part of our SNC committee, who also
help us with a lot of different tasks.
And what I basically do is get lots of important emails and forward them to my amazing students
who do everything.
And then I pay for things with money and such.
But like, I feel like it's great because they are doing the work with the nuts and the bolts.
I'm more like a figurehead and I will, you know, I supervise and not that they need much
of it.
Students can get a little crazy sometimes, you know, with Lyon and other people being
in the room.
But you know, we manage and these guys do the hard work, right?
And I really appreciate that.
I never have to sweat about this group.
To follow up on what Karis said, three of us from ICS are chairs for Thai MUN.
So Karis, what are you, your historical crisis committee?
Yeah, I actually was a background chair last year for historical crisis committee, but
it was online.
So I'm very excited to go in person this year because Thai MUN is such a prestigious conference
and it's a lot more exciting when it's in person.
Yeah, it's the same for me.
I'm chairing the historical special operations committee, which is the same committee I was
in last year, actually, as a delegate.
So I'm super excited to be chairing a committee that I'm passionate about.
And it's great that I also get to rewrite the rules of procedure for the same committee
because, you know, things can always be improved.
It was a brand new committee.
And yeah, it was really fun.
Our next question is, what is the most difficult part about organizing a conference?
I would definitely say there are so many logistics.
I think the biggest part is like maintenance, having to talk to so many different teachers
at ICS, but also so many different advisors and teachers at other schools.
And currently, we've been trying to do the best job that we can at having delegates sign
up for our conference, which is pretty difficult because that means we have to do a lot of
advertising on Instagram, emails being sent.
So we're pretty much doing that every day currently.
And another difficult part is a bunch of items that have to be purchased, whether it's notepads,
stickers, gavels, so many little things that sometimes you might forget about.
And then we think about them later and we're like, oh, we have to do that.
To add on that, I think the harder part is to balance all of that before we actually
get to the conference dates.
I feel like we really started a bit late for ICS month and for this year.
So we are kind of rushing through a lot of things.
We just got the gavels a few days ago.
We still haven't gotten our notepads and our delegate list is far from being complete.
We're currently working on that though.
Rushing the time to kind of balance these different responsibilities as the organizing
committee is I think the hardest part, apart from the logistics themselves to organize
a successful conference and a successful event in general.
I think a lot of times I feel like when a student comes into my room, they're saying,
Mr. Dayton, they start talking really fast.
I feel like I have to just tell them slow down and tell me what happened.
And because there's so many things that you have to do, you have to think about, maybe
you didn't prepare for, with experience comes a degree of certainty, perhaps a degree of
competence.
And when you're running or actually your first conference, which is like most of us are doing
here, then it's worrying, you know, and also you can even overthink or maybe think what
if this happens?
What if that happens?
Knowing what to spend your time doing is important.
And then yeah, like Harris said, there's so many logistical challenges that we probably
didn't imagine before we started actually putting it together.
Our next question is what is MUN useful for in the future?
As a person who's applying to college, I think I can say a few things I've been considering.
So most obviously, like a career in the United Nations itself is obviously a thing to consider.
If you want to be either like the secretary general, like I think that can be an option
while it's in a rotational basis.
You can also work in one of the boroughs of the United Nations like UNICEF or something
like that as one of the office jobs.
If you want like an internship, there's also like various internships that are available
to consider going into.
I think there's like an opportunity that UNCC going on right now for the university students
that were actually going into these meetings and actually helping the people run the actual
meetings.
So those are a few things.
If you want to go into international law or take a more law route, you can use that degree
or you can use that experience to get like a JD to go into law school or to eventually
become a lawyer.
To be honest, the possibilities are literally endless here.
So the opportunities are open.
I think MUN improves social skills just in general, which you need for any job.
And so currently, I mean, as we attend MUN conferences, we're all improving our social
skills.
But for me personally, I think it's certified what I wanted to study.
And as I'm applying to college, I have an interest in global studies, international
relations, political science, government, that area definitely was certified because
I attended MUN conferences.
And because it is in the general scope of those areas of study, I realized this is what
I wanted to study.
So being at MUN for all four years, it helped me realize that this is something that I'm
passionate about and want to take after high school.
Yes.
And everyone needs to speak, listen, you know, and to be able to solve problems.
And this is exactly what it's all about.
You're given complex problems, which there is no easy solution to.
And you have to somehow come up with something that other people are actually going to be
on board with.
And it's really difficult.
But once you have been able to develop these skills, as Kara said, and Jeremy, that there's
so many endless applications of what you can do with those skills.
Our last question is, are students still allowed to join the club?
Well, as we're coming towards second semester and even starting second semester, I think
that if there aren't as many conferences available as the start of last year, where there were
we had plans for I think at least four or five different conferences.
In second semester, we only have, I think, including ICS1, there's three that I'm certain
of, maybe four.
So in terms of joining conferences, there's, I think, one or two you can go to as of now.
But if you want to join the club and come to meetings to see what we're doing, to practice
the skills before you go to an actual conference next year, that's also an open opportunity.
And the door is always open for all delegates who wish to join.
It's a great way to observe if you do want to join MU in the next year and we meet in
Mr. Dayton's room every Friday.
So if you have any questions, you can always talk to one of us.
We are running out of time, but thank you so much to our guests for joining us.
It has been a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
As we end this episode, we would like to thank our listeners and guests for continuing to
support the podcast.
Our next episode will be centered around a special subject and day, Valentine's.
We'll be hearing stories about dating, along with sharing a list of things not to say or
do on a first date, then ending with a fun game called Will Lion Find a Mate?
Make sure to listen to it.
This podcast would not be possible without the hard work and support of our international
student production team.
All music and sound effects are courtesy of Pixabay.com, a vibrant community of creatives
sharing copyright free images, videos and music.
And we are signing off until next time.
We are Students Incorporated, because your voice matters.