The school’s Model United Nations (MUN) competed at Santa Monica High School MUN on Jan. 24. 16 delegates from the school competed, with 11 winning awards. News Reporter Kara Kazaeri ’27, Hayley Ross-Settineri ’27 and Miro Katan ’28 won Best Delegate. Features Reporter Donna Enayati ’27, Ethan Chen ’26, Chase Mayer ’26 and Miro Katan ’28 won Research Awards. Yari Milakin ’27, Opinion and Satire Reporter Jack Fener ’27 and Junior Prefect Chase Rudoy ’27 won Outstanding Delegate. Camille Ahart ’27 received an Award of Commendation.
The conference hosted keynote speaker Ambassador Derek Shearer, who is Emeritus Chevalier Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Miro Katan ’28 said he appreciated Shearer’s speech and its connection to current events.
“The guest speaker was pretty interesting,” Katan said. “He was the former U.S. ambassador to Finland. He was talking about his experience with the UN and how it connects to stuff going on today.”
Hayley Ross-Settineri ’27 said she appreciated attending a smaller conference where the stakes were lower.
“The only other two [MUN competitions] I’ve done are national conferences, so this one was a little bit smaller,” Ross-Settineri said. “It felt like more of a community event, and I honestly liked it better because it seemed like there was a lot less pressure. It was more about being friends with people and meeting people from other schools.”
Chase Rudoy ’27 said the smaller committee size gave him more opportunities to speak, work with others and try new things.
“My committee had fewer people than the previous Model UN conferences I was at, and I would actually say that was a positive experience,” Rudoy said. “Although it was a little less competitive, I got more opportunities to speak, more opportunities to collaborate with other people in the room and more attention from the judges. The MUN chairs told us to kind of treat this as practice for the bigger national tournaments, which gave me a lot of confidence to step outside my comfort zone.”
Katan said the experience was challenging because it was his first time in a crisis committee, which is a MUN simulation in which delegates represent individuals to solve immediate and evolving crises.
“I was representing a character and had to advance what he would have wanted in that time,” Katan said. “It was really hard for me because it was my first time doing this. It’s not how the normal Model UN works. I researched a ton when I wrote my position paper. There were only eight people in my committee, but I managed to work really hard along with my friend, who was also from Harvard-Westlake.”
