16 students in Years 7, 8 and 9 attended the Junior MUN conference at Reigate last weekend. This proved to be an excellent starter conference for our pupils with about 140 delegates from 6 schools. The students began the day with workshops on procedure and public speaking which proved helpful for the rest of the day.
All of the students got involved in speaking, lobbying, working with delegates from other schools on a short resolution and a number made excellent amendments in debate. Perhaps the most active were Iris and Lara in Year 7, Terrell, Ethan, CJ and Ollie in Year 8 and Andrew and Luke in Year 9.
Royal Russell students seen here at the Reigate Grammar MUN Conference on Saturday 12th May 2018.
Eight Royal Russell students attended the 30th Dublin MUN conference representing Cuba and providing two advocates to the ICJ. A big highlight was the success of Stevie and Lucas representing the UK, India and Pakistan in the ICJ in a case brought by Marshall Islands. The quality and success of the ICJ hangs on the hard work, preparation and presentation skills of the two pairs of advocates and Stevie and Lucas were faced with a very good pair of advocates from Terenure school and a very impressive group of judges under Mr Stern’s guidance. Stevie and Lucas were brilliant – working really well together and producing an excellent case. They say the ICJ isn’t about winning and losing but 16 of the 20 Judges come down on their side on every count!
Otherwise we had an inexperienced team representing Cuba led by Davlesh, who made an excellent opening speech, spoke on almost every topic and won a Highly Commended award. Ana-Maria also spoke on a number of her own amendments and managed to get her resolution successfully debated in her committee. Saayeethen, Keitaro, Gedi and Jago all spoke in their committees and made friends with other international students.
As always the St Andrews staff and students were incredibly welcoming and our students had a great time capped by our delegation meal complete with Irish folk singers and a number of river dancers.
20 students attended the Haileybury MUN conference in March representing Sweden, North Korea, Haiti and Ghana. With a mainly young and inexperienced team they all did really well. Everybody spoke in their committees making policy statements, asking questions and most took to the floor. Stevie and Yasmin both had their resolutions debated with Stevie’s being one of the few chosen to be debated in GA where it passed. Meera was the voice of reason in the Security Council in her last conference and Antonia did well too, in her last conference. At the closing ceremony Ben Preston, Stevie Palmer, and Ella Flaherty won Highly Commended delegate awards with Dionne Scougul winning a Distinguished Delegate award.
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Royal Russell pupils excelled themselves yet again at Habs Boys MUN conference last weekend, with Lucas Jones, Ben Preston and Ella Jones winning top delegate awards. Ten RRS pupils attended, representing Mongolia and the UK. Megan Driver made key resolution amendments for the UK and Ben had as many as 7 of his amendments passed for Mongolia. It was Yasmin’s first appearance on the Security Council and she both enjoyed her experience and contributed well to the proceedings in this high level committee. It was Mitchell’s second MUN conference and he was desperate to speak! Alex, Chris, Sean and Davlesh all performed really well and we look forward to seeing all of them again at future conferences.
The Royal Russell students have now returned from a very successful THIMUN conference. Our delegates did really well in the committees. Despite there being 3,000 delegates at the conference 6 of our students managed to be main submitter or co-submitter (and 1st yield) on a resolution that they presented in their committee – Pippa, Stevie, Nikita, Megan, Ella and Ben. All of them managed to pass their resolutions – an achievement we haven’t equalled for many years. All of the other students spoke in their committees. Lucas continued chairing in ECOSOC where he did an excellent job – calm, unruffled and professional. On the press team Claudia, Max and Peter were real stars. Claudia produced an amazing selection of art work whilst Peter and Max wrote some very thought provoking articles. Peter interviewed David Williams who has written a book commemorating the first 50 years of THIMUN. Royal Russell is discussed as the first school to affiliate to THIMUN (there are now over 50 worldwide) and the first school which received a delegation from the Hague schools back in 1982. One of the delegates at that conference was the current King of Netherlands then a 16 year-old. He opened the conference this year. The closing ceremony was a more dramatic affair with loud drummers and a flag waving ceremony with our ambassador, Stevie, energetically waving the Ghana flag.
19 Royal Russell students are attending the 50th annual THIMUN conference this week which was opened on Monday by the King of the Netherlands (who, as a student, had attended the Royal Russell MUN conference back in 1982). Our students, representing Ghana, have made a great start to the conference. Alex, Megan, Farrah and Stevie all made excellent opening speeches in their committees and a number of students have managed to be the main submitters or 1st yield on resolutions that have been passed in Approvals. They are all hoping to get their resolution debated later in the week. Lucas has made a great start as a chair of ECOSOC and our three members of the press team, Max, Peter and Claudia, have already contributed to three copies of the conference newspaper with articles and drawings. On Wednesday 12 students visited the International Criminal Court and watched a former child soldier give evidence as part of the trial of Dominic Ongwen a former commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.
Royal Russell students had a very successful day at the Croydon High MUN conference on Saturday 18th November. Three of our students were asked to guest chair committees at the conference and Pippa, Meera and Ella all did a great job chairing with their usual calm assurance and excellent knowledge of procedure. We took three delegations to the conference representing China, Barbados and Belgium. For most of our delegates this was their first or second conference and they did well, making their policy statements and speaking during debate. The most impressive of the first time delegates was Mitchell who won a Highly Commended delegate award representing China. Also doing well as part of the China delegation were Krish (who also won a Highly Commended delegate award), and Stevie and Ben who were both name checked in the closing ceremony for their excellent contributions in debate. There were seventy delegations from more than thirty schools at the conference so Royal Russell did really well to win one of only four delegation awards, with China being named one of the Highly Commended Delegations.
The 36th annual RRSiMUN conference closed on Tuesday 17th October after 4 great days of debating. At the end of the conference the following students won Highly commended delegate awards:
COMMITTEE | HIGHLY COMMENDED DELEGATES |
CRISIS | Australia, China, Italy, Libya, Togo |
ENVIRONMENT | UK, China, Libya, Tanzania, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Myanmar |
SPECPOL 1 | Germany, Italy, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Syria |
SPECPOL 2 | Bosnia, DPRK, UK, Yemen, France, Sri Lanka, Argentina |
SOCHUM 1 | Zimbabwe, Poland, Switzerland, Libya, Cameroon, Sweden, Ghana, Ethiopia |
SOCHUM 2 | Italy, China, Fiji, Tanzania, France, India, Togo |
SPECIAL CONFERENCE | China, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Tanzania, Egypt, UK, Poland, Syria |
ECOFIN | Uzbekistan, Libya, UK, Poland, Cameroon, Sweden, Singapore |
DISEC 1 | China, France, Pakistan, Poland, Syria, UK, Yemen |
DISEC 2 | France, China, DPRK, Philippines, Libya, Bangladesh, Uruguay |
SECURITY COUNCIL | Sweden, China, Japan, Italy, France |
This year we have had record numbers attending MiniMUN on a Wednesday evening. Over forty Year 6, 7 and 8 students have been debating topics as wide ranging as all countries having to introduce gender neutral uniform to legalising cannabis for adults via continuing with the Death Penalty. On Wednesday we had the annual debate in the Great Hall with the students having the chance to debate in the General Assembly set up for our annual conference.
Twelve Year 7, 8 and 9 Royal Russell students attended the Reigate Junior MUN conference last Saturday representing Kazakhstan, Egypt and the United Kingdom. This was a great opportunity for our junior MUN delegates to experience their first conference. The day included a couple of workshops on Public Speaking and MUN debating. The students in GA committees then had a short debate on a motion followed by a chance to deliver a policy statement. After this the students learnt how to construct a resolution splitting into groups to write full resolutions together. The rest of the day for these students was spent debating the resolutions. All our students did really well, all speaking in their committees. Particularly impressive were Abigail – always speaking in her committee, Joy who made a great opening speech and really joined in and David who ended up taking the floor in GA and answering some tough questions.
Meanwhile our three Security Council delegates (Arthur, Luke and Andrew) spent all day in the Council debating clauses on Nuclear Weapons and the current war in Syria and Iraq. They all had amendments debated and spoke well.
The huge success of the students suggests that the future of MUN at Royal Russell is very bright.
On Friday lunchtime we set off for the annual Haileybury MUN conference, with sixteen pupils all ready to start debate and meet up with old friends. Thalia and Meera were invited to the conference as guest chairs and showed an impressive understanding of the debate procedure. Having prepared thoroughly beforehand Stevie, Josh, Pippa and Nikolai all had their resolutions debated in their committees, with Josh and Pippa making it into the General Assembly booklet – a great achievement. The standard this year was particularly high with lots of seasoned MUN schools in attendance but we came away with a collection of awards: Pippa winning Highly Commended Delegate and Josh, Alex L and Stevie all winning Distinguished Delegate Awards.
On Saturday 11 March 2017 we took three delegations to the City of London MUN conference. Although a couple of experienced Hague veterans attended, largely this was an opportunity for less experienced delegates, several attending their first conference.
The day started with a particularly interesting key note address given by James Robbins, the BBC’s chief diplomatic correspondent, in which he described the best and worst he had encountered in his reporting for the BBC (meeting Nelson Mandela and Muammar Gaddafi, respectively), and concluding with a passionate paean to democracy, freedom and the values enshrined in the United N
Speeches and debate followed on a range of topics from the pressing issue of ISIS to the less well appreciated plight of the Rohingya people. Hats off, in particular, to Dionne Scougul who stepped in as a late replacement with less than 24 hours notice to attend her first conference, debating this challenging latter topic.
Ella Jones’ first experience of debate in security council looked like it was her fiftieth, and she walked away with the highly commended delegate award. Alex Blake also picked up a highly commended award. Others, including Megan, Josh and Stevie were all excellent.
Another successful day for RRS MUN; well done to all.
