While we had started with the secretariat meeting for COMUN 2022 in the beginning, soon after that followed the interview process for selecting the executive committee for COMUN (LO5 Showing perseverance and commitment). This year the committees that have been selected are GA3, GA4, ECOSOC, CCPCJ, FSC, AU and IPC. Chairs for each of these committees were selected using interviews. Other non-chair positions also had to be interviewed which included heads of community service and deputy head of operations and administration. Our meetings have been going on for a couple of weeks now and overall we have had a lot of progress since each committee has picked their topics and are now working on study guides. In my new role as head of operations, I have been working alongside the administration department (LO4 Working collaboratively with others) to figure out the logistics for the conference itself. This information includes finding out the amount of funds we have, allocating money according to our budgets and encouraging the exco to get sponsorships for the conference. Since we are back on campus after a long time online our further plans will include how and where we will conduct our conference.

COMUN 2021 was completely online this year. It was three days of learning, creating, and a lot of listening for me this year. The first two days are where we go to the committee we picked but on the last day, we write a group article where we collaborate with people who were from the same agency.

Day 1 and 2 – For Day 1 and Day 2 I was writing an Editorial piece and a News Article respectively. Since the first day of the conference involved delegates giving their statements on their country’s stance and then moving into moderated caucus where a lot of sub-topics related to the mandate of the WHO were discussed. Therefore for my article, I wrote down a lot of the stances that were spoken about showing perspectives for and against the topic and the propaganda my news agency sputnik supports. Taking into account the feedback the chair’s for IPC gave me in practice debate 2 I wanted to provide the readers a broader perspective and still stick to the views my news agency would support (LO1). I did this by taking down a lot of quotes but changing the perspective in which they were taken, for example, if a country’s views did not support the political views my agency had, I just framed them in a more negative way while not giving false information related to the pandemic. Since I was in WHO for the first two days it was important that I was not deviating from the truth because the pandemic is a worldwide crisis and most countries are facing similar problems that cannot be changed (LO6). Day 2 was when the resolutions for the WHO were written and discussed. This is what I discussed in the article as well. I included all the points of discussion in the resolution and why they were important to be discussed in the conference (LO1). There were a lot of topics that were covered throughout Day 2 and usually the voting on resolutions occurs on the same day and I would report on that as well but the time ran out, therefore, that was left for Day 3.

Day 3 – On this day we were doing crisis situations and the committee we were reporting on was changed and we were collaborating with people from different schools who had the same agency. I reached out to my partner for the article and we shared a document. We allocated different sections of the article and then at the end, we brainstormed more things to add, delete, or edit in order to make the article coherent and consistent (LO5). Since the conference was very long we even decided to take notes on different crisis situation and updates. Therefore I would take notes for a 5 crisis situation or updates and then my partner did the same. In this way not only was our workload divided but at the end when we were organizing everything we had two different writing styles and perspectives that came together (LO5).

Overall it was a completely new experience and I really enjoyed collaborating with someone who was experienced. I gained a lot of insight from them on several things that we could do in an article. My research and writing skills definitely became really helpful as I had learned these from investigating journalism that we covered in school.

 

Learning outcomes in this post –

LO1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

LO5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

LO6 –  Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

 

This year for our MUN conference I chose to do the International Press Committee (IPC) where we report upon other committee agendas based upon the new agency we pick or that is allotted to us. I picked Sputnik which is a Russian news agency and the reason I chose that was because I wanted to explore new biases since I had a vast knowledge about the view news agencies like BBC or Times of India have because I have read them before. This challenged me to explore different political views, new writing styles and tones, and also the structures in which the articles were written. For IPC we write two types of articles one is an editorial and the other is a news article. Editorials often include the editor’s opinion using their agencies’ bias and tone whereas a news article covers a specific event giving the facts of what occurred. The committee I am going to be reporting upon as Sputnik is the WHO committee.

The agenda for WHO during the practice debate was the question of robotics and artificial intelligence utilized in medical surgery and the implications of forthcoming technologies in redesigning the health sphere. For practice debate 2 we were told by the IPC chairs for that debate we were going to be writing an editorial piece on the topic. Editorial piece are opinion based articles and for MUN you have to include a lot of your news agencies propaganda. Sputnik supports all the actions taken by Russia therefore throughout the conference I took a lot of quotes from the delagate of Russia inorder to provide evidence for the arguments I put in my article. I also took upon myself to do extra research even though that was not required, because I got a lot of background information on the topic itself therefore being well informed about AI and it’s consquences on different countries.

 

After the second practice debate, I learnt a lot from the whole process as we also got feedback back from the chairs. I did really well overall especially since it was my first time taking part as a press delgate. The chairs scored me a 24/30 and told me to add quotes from other delagtes in the debate as well so that readers can get an overview of other countries and their views as well. I have taken into account their feedback and I will apply this for the conference coming up.