MUN Colleagues:

We hope school responsibilities and MUN organization logistics are going well enough that we will see some of you and your students at our Saturday, Sept. 22, 2018 INTRO to Model U.N. and Presiding Officer training at Boulder H.S. - from 12:30 to 2:30 pm. A special welcome goes out to new sponsors of MUN teams! We will have a meeting for you with experienced sponsors sharing Colorado H.S. MUN logistics and also meet the new director of the CU-Boulder HS MUN conference, while your students are engaged elsewhere.

It will be an active and practical day for your students. We will all meet briefly in the auditorium just inside the Arapaho Ave main entrance, then your new MUN student delegates will go in pairs to five or six different rooms to learn basic MUN parliamentary procedure in low key, practice, beginner Security Councils. The presiding officers are friendly, experienced, high school MUN students who will help and encourage them to give informal speeches, engage in diplomatic negotiations, and use appropriate motions to amend, then pass or defeat pre-written (but basic and amendable) U.N. style resolutions.

In pairs, your new student delegates will pick a country to represent in one of the six or seven Security Council rooms. They will walk in and find 15 pairs of desks with the voting placard (w/ the flag and name) of a country they choose to represent. They will discuss three possible sets of Security Council actions (resolutions), negotiate with other delegates, and write amendments to one of the “Climate Change” sample resolutions, then vote to pass or defeat that resolution they voted to discuss first.

Climate change is one of the two issues in the Beginner Security Council at our Boulder-Fairview H.S. MUN conference a month later, Oct. 20. If you have student delegates who are skeptical re: human causes of climate change or who do not believe climate change is occurring, they may want to choose to represent Poland, the U.S., or Russia.

The climate change background document and three pre-written resolutions for this issue area are attached and will posted on Colorado MUN website at www.coloradomun.org at the “BHS INTRO to MUN and PO Training" link. It is important that your beginner, student delegates read both the background document and three possible resolutions in advance - and bring copies of the three resolutions with them.

The background document provides basic information and is all they need to read for the INTRO. However, for the full day, formal MUN conference Oct. 20, they will need to conduct more extensive research on climate change, the second Beginner Security Council issue, and their country/state and its policies and attitudes towards both issues.

The three resolutions in our Colorado MUN beginner councils represent a fairly wide range of possible solutions to the issues, but are general enough that they need multiple, substantive amendments.

We will NOT have hard copies of the background document or resolutions for the beginner delegates, so please make sure they have read the background document and bring hard copies of the resolutions. (Computers are generally not allowed in most Colorado MUN councils.) We will provide specific country position paragraphs for each country/state with key talking points on where that country stands on climate change. Your student delegates can read the roughly one minute long paragraph provided verbatim as their first speech or paraphrase the key talking points.

After the practice, beginner Security Council ends (2:20 pm), delegates will receive advice, encouragement, a copy of the Col. H.S. MUN judging criteria, a handout w/ research suggestions, Internet sites, and general participation tips put together by our more experienced delegates.

Your more experienced students hoping to be Presiding Officers at conferences this year, will be trained by our Boulder and Fairview HS MUN Secretary-Generals. Potential POs should down load and bring "Colorado HS MUN Rules of Parliamentary Procedure" and "PO Procedures" from the Colorado MUN website.

Training and dress is casual. There is no charge to participate and for the handouts, building rental, and custodial fee. There will be a new sponsor meeting from 1:00 to 1:45 and a general sponsor meeting from 1:45-2:15. We will send out an additional update related to parking and suggestions for possibly taking your students to an early lunch or late brunch in Boulder. We look forward to seeing you and your students Saturday, Sept. 22.

Andy Aiken

Boulder H.S. MUN Co-Sponsor

andyaiken@earthlink.net