While some Upper School (US) students enjoyed the snow during MLK Day weekend, 13 members of the US Model United Nations (MUN) Club were in committee sessions trying to solve global issues. The attendees spent four days — Jan. 15-18 — together in New Haven, Connecticut, at the 52nd annual conference of Yale Model United Nations (YMUN).
The US delegation brought back six awards, with Salar Sekhavat ’26 winning Best Delegate in his committee. Erin Yu and Cookie Nassif (both ’27) won Honorable Delegates and Sofia Egan ’26, Sydney Xu and Matias Egan (both ’28) won Best Position Papers.
According to its website, YMUN hopes to engage delegates to think critically about pressing global issues, including historical conflicts, along with humanitarian responses, in order to collaborate and solve these issues. The conference hosted more than 1,800 delegates from more than 25 countries.
After attending Harvard’s conference in 2025 (See Volume 53, Issue 8: “MUN Club goes local, attends Harvard Conference”), US English Teacher and MUN Faculty Advisor Sharon Krauss said the club chose to go to YMUN.
“The student experience was not as good at Harvard because that conference was considerably larger than Yale’s, so delegates did not have as much time to speak in their committees, which wasn’t as fun for them.”
Ms. Krauss said she was hopeful Yale would be an improvement.
“I hope that they are able to engage meaningfully with other students from all over the world, with global current events and historical events that bring them to a greater understanding.”
Matias said he felt that the Harvard experience was challenging last year.
“At Harvard, we just bussed from BB&N every day, which wasn’t an awesome experience. We had to wake up really early and come here every day.”
At the Yale conference, students stayed at a hotel together. Matias said he preferred the smaller environment at YMUN.
“My last year at Harvard Model UN, I felt really overwhelmed, as there were really large rooms, and I was in a big delegation. I think there were around 200 to 300 people.”
Sydney represented Austria and spoke on the topic of water scarcity and greenhouse gas management.
“I feel like the more interested you are, the better you do because you are more involved with the research,” she said.
Sydney said she hoped to gain real world skills from the conference.
“My goal is to improve my public speaking skills and my ability to voice my ideas clearly and work with other people. I feel like these skills really extend beyond school and into real life and the working environment.”
Erin represented Mongolia in the conference and worked on enhancing regional cooperation in the face of global economic uncertainty.
“For all of us, the awards and stuff, that’s all great, but the friends that you meet there and the cool stories that you get to hear from the South Americans and the kids that are coming from Asian schools, it’s so insane. It’s such a new perspective compared to a lot of the stuff that we have here.”
The club spent most of their budget on this conference, and the process took months of preparation. Erin said she expects the club to return to YMUN next year.
