Thursday, April 16, 2009

Comments About Model UN?

Posted by Romo at 6:35 PM

66 comments:

  1. 4footgermanApril 16, 2009 at 9:06 PM

    Didn't like it at all.... Most people (me included) had no idea what to do at the beginning

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  2. Joey IversApril 16, 2009 at 9:28 PM

    It was alright, but it was WAY to hot in the auditorium with all of those people. It made it really hard to concentrate, and I got a headache. It would have been a lot more enjoyable if the AC was on...( If they have AC in there)

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  3. SteffenomotronApril 16, 2009 at 9:52 PM

    Yeah it was pretty repetitive, kids being kids and the Chair banging his gavel over and over again, but it was okay.

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  4. EeyahnApril 16, 2009 at 10:20 PM

    i hate stairs... nuff said.

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  5. AnonymousApril 16, 2009 at 10:33 PM

    I thought it was awesome.

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  6. AnonymousApril 16, 2009 at 10:49 PM

    I thought it was sick. Me and Jordan had fun and speaking wasn't as bad as I thought. Oh and screw Croatia and the US.

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  7. Emily GotzscheApril 16, 2009 at 10:52 PM

    it was fun if you MADE it fun :]

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  8. MC RaltaApril 16, 2009 at 10:55 PM

    Terrible. Way to many people (most weren't even caring/ trying). They need to make this a two day thing, one half of the freshmen class goes and then the other class goes if they want it to work. A lot of people just went up and said we're poor, give us the monies.

    Too hot and uncomfortable in the auditoruim.

    Everyone just ignored the chairmen making him angry, this repeated about for the whole day.

    Global Classrooms was dealing with too many people, there needs to be a lot more smaller groups so it's more focused. I tried to pay attention and participate but it was pretty hard.

    The resolutions we passed could've been made in a half hour tops. All of it was like improve schools, eradicate poverty, send money etc.

    All in all, a waste of time and energy.

    My two cents.

    P.S if the UN is actually like this... we're screwed

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  9. RomoApril 16, 2009 at 11:23 PM

    we're screwed, then. i am truly sorry some of you did noy enjoy it. trust that i recognized your plight and passed on concerns to others. but i agree that if you put in the energy, you felt rewarded. sec council was kinda cool...but yeah - not enough conflict and true debate. we'll talk more tomorrow

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  10. UnknownApril 17, 2009 at 7:50 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  11. Mystery ManApril 17, 2009 at 4:05 PM

    The thing went horribly and the people were idiots and the whole thing deserves an F. They a failed big time. Talking about people failing the french and canadiens fail the best. Watch and enjoy their fail.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J5PWIgRSOM&feature

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  12. Fennec FoxApril 17, 2009 at 4:07 PM

    They (Global Classrooms) needed to take an hour or so at the beginning to thoroughly explain what we needed to know/do for the whole day.

    I wanted to have more of a debating stuff as well, they could have presented a scenario that each country would take a stance on.

    These recommendations are for the GA, and if there are ever that many people again, they should make multiple sessions of it

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  13. Mystery ManApril 17, 2009 at 4:18 PM

    Here's some funny fails
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S61zLcMFp1A&feature=related
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRDiToE4gI
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUgcFiLA0_o

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  14. N88 wAhLApril 17, 2009 at 4:46 PM

    So we were the first high school in Minneapolis to do the Model UN, so they were sort of testing the waters here. If Global Classrooms had actually taken the time to think about what we would have wanted to take from the Model UN, and what we would have enjoyed, rather than just assuming we like the same things K-8 kids like, for example, Buzzwords: a "fun" addition to the Model UN, where we have to incorporate words like bubblegum and port-a-potty into our speeches. Overall, there were too many of us, it was incredibly hot in Eco-Soc (i dont even want to know what it must have been like for GA), it was about 3 hours too long, and we all went in having little to no idea of what to do. And the word "decorum" will forever be burned into my mind. And not in a good way.

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  15. Ina DaleApril 17, 2009 at 4:51 PM

    I thought it was too crazily confusing and it could have been planned better. A slightly longer break for lunch might also have been good.

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  16. RuthAnn ZwickApril 17, 2009 at 4:58 PM

    Model UN was a new experience for me and i was very disappointed because i love to debate and there was never any open discussion of the resolutions or any issues. I thought it would have been much better if the GA was broken into smaller groups because people got kind of rowdy with such a big group.

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  17. amanduhApril 17, 2009 at 7:08 PM

    Yeah I heard security council was fun and that ECOSOC was horrible. Different opinions from people in different organizations..I thought General Assembly was ok, but there were too many breaks and it was kind of unorganized. Some kids could have taken it a little more seriously and could have been more respectful to the chair person. I know he was a bit crabby and mean, but if I had to deal with 200 kids, I'd be like that too! = ]

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  18. XavierApril 17, 2009 at 7:17 PM

    for 1 we should know what each group is going to talk about... also what we need to know (parliamentary procedure and stuff like that) also we should have people who are fun and know how to deal with teenagers also they need to know how to say malawi... the things that were bad for me i just wrote how they could be fixed. p.s no more speakers cause they hurted my ears

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  19. Will P.April 17, 2009 at 7:20 PM

    I thought that Model UN seemed unprepared and confusing from what I heard from the General Assembly and ECOSOC. In Security Council, it really worked out well because most knew what they were doing. It would have been interesting to see more problems between countries during debates and I would have liked to see more countries get into it. I think that when scenarios came around, the moderators asked us our position on the topic (i.e., Kurdistan). I also think that there should have been more “breaks” (at least in the Security Council). I also think that it would have helped if the moderators had informed us about the processes and what we would be doing, as I found it confusing in some parts.

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  20. Lea BartApril 17, 2009 at 8:02 PM

    No one knew what to do! They didn't explain resolutions at all.
    When we were voting a really good one didn't pass because some guy just yelled no for every single country.
    No one knew what decorum meant, so it didn't make us stop talking.
    No one knew what we were supposed to be talking about when we had to speak for a minute, so everyone just said "poverty is bad and we should fix it"
    Their snacks were only things with peanuts and I got hungry.
    A lot of kids from other classes didn't study, didn't know what their country was, or skipped
    The lady talking for us was trying to be funny, but it never worked, so after 30 seconds we stopped listening to her. She also made a lot of mistakes. Someone who actually knew what they were doing should have been chair.
    They should just do classrooms at a time, or at least not make groups bigger than 50. ECOSOC, which was like 100 kids, didn't work at all, so general assembly must have been crazy.

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  21. bologna12April 17, 2009 at 10:35 PM

    I thought that the whole thing went really badly. They expected us to know what to do without any training from them and it made them angry when we didn't use procedure right but again we had no training. A lot of the students were also out of control though, many people were yelling or talking loudly while people were trying to speak to the whole group etc...
    Overall it just ended up being really bad.

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  22. ali.ali.bo.baliApril 17, 2009 at 10:44 PM

    whenever we tried to make it interesting, the chair would shoot us down. they were way too uptight and had no idea how to deal with us. every time someone said something interesting or funny, we would laugh out of relief and the chair would bang her gavel and go "DECORUM!!" when we were asked to give speeches and we didn't know what to say, the chair said, "Just say your country and why poverty is bad." when we handed in the rough drafts of our resolutions, they would read them and tell us how our policies should be changed, as if we, who had diligently researched our countries, could not have valid, unique ideas. near the end of the day, most of us just gave up and didn't see any point to resolutions or voting.

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  23. Peter CentnerApril 17, 2009 at 11:10 PM

    I really enjoyed the Model UN. I thought it was a lot of fun. The fact that we only had about 30 people helped a good deal with that, though because you got to talk more and you were really given an opportunity to voice your opinion and the opinion of the country you were representing.

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  24. 4footgermanApril 18, 2009 at 9:13 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  25. 4footgermanApril 18, 2009 at 9:14 AM

    GA sucked. It is as simple as that.
    The Global Classrooms people came in with no plan, and it seemed that they were improvising just as much on the fly as we were. As Romo said, they didn't keep their promises of sending speakers to each classrooms (which might have eliminated 40% of the confusion), and they didn't teach us the processes we would be following during the sessions (which would have eliminated another 50% of the confusion). Now where I pulled these numbers out of, yes it was my ass, but they are just guesses of how much better the whole thing would have went if they had followed just those two things. The experience was made worse by the fact that the rules that they did give out to us, were completely disregarded, and the ones that the chair established were implemented and taken away at his bidding.

    On the student front, many students seemed like they didn't know anything about their own country, much less about others and how the UN worked. This ruled out the possibility of any meaningful progress because people didn't understand their countries viewpoints and what would actually be best for it. This led to resolutions promoting Camel Racing as a necessary front in the fight against poverty in the middle east. There was also a lot of rude behavior and disrespect going on, but that was a result of people feeling confused, not caring, and feeling disappointed at the whole process.

    On the teachers front, I think that the decision to make this be a mandatory project for every freshman was a very bad idea, since it ended up with students who didn't care, purposely screwing up the whole thing. I think that the model UN should have been an A/B project (where if you don't do it, you can't get an A or a B for a grade). This would result in only people who are academically inclined in the first place to be involved. I also think that other teachers did not nearly prepare their students enough (some people thought that the United States ran the UN).

    Yes this was a lengthly complaint.

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  26. AnonymousApril 18, 2009 at 3:04 PM

    phhsh for some reason I'm supposed to make ANOTHER comment. So here goes.


    I thought it was awesome BECAUSE..
    -at the general assembly I was able to talk with all (most) of the freshmen and I thought that was fun
    -we got snacks


    I will admit, since it was so crazy I didn't feel like doing any "work". It felt like it would be a waste of my time considering how the event was going.

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  27. SihamApril 18, 2009 at 5:49 PM

    I thought model UN was really boring and i really didn't get what was going on in the beginning but i got the hand of it a little at the end.

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  28. Otaku4lifeApril 18, 2009 at 8:07 PM

    It was pretty boring, everything said was obvious and there were no debates, poor countries said "give us money" some richer said "we'll give you money", It seemed as if no one got into any character everyone who spoke didn't speak with info about their contry's politics (communist countries sounded exactly like socialist countries if they were in the same economic situation).

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  29. AminApril 18, 2009 at 9:01 PM

    I thought it was a big waste of time i would've rather been in class. I hope it is better next time we do it.

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  30. kateApril 18, 2009 at 9:05 PM

    the model UN thing was not very fun... I think it was because with that number of people ( in general assembly). I would split the groups up so that it is easier to work. Maybe put the people who are more serious about it in the same groups.

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  31. DJ MiscApril 19, 2009 at 12:24 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  32. DJ MiscApril 19, 2009 at 12:27 AM

    it was stupid!!!!!!! to hot and nothing to do but just sit there and do nothing!!!!!!!

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  33. .emmack.April 19, 2009 at 1:36 PM

    the caucuses.
    they had a 10 minute caucus like every 5 minutes even though it was never explained to us what we were suposed to do during them so by the end of the day everyone just sat around and waited for them to be over.

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  34. noraApril 19, 2009 at 1:43 PM

    I thought it was a good idea but it was really unorganized and I had no idea what we were supposed to be doing. The people in charge did not explain how things were supposed to go to us but expected that we would just know how to do everything. We had also been told that we would get a couple breaks but we did not and when someone motioned for a break, they were told that we had just caucused and that was enough of a break. Some resolutions and motions were shot down as well.

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  35. AnonymousApril 19, 2009 at 2:32 PM

    They were very hyporitical. they wanted it to be seriuos but then they would tell us to use buzz words, and then get mad at us for laughing. we were not prepared and they acted condescending towards us, making us feel stupid because they failed to come to our classrooms adnd tell us what we would need to do!

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  36. AnonymousApril 19, 2009 at 2:42 PM

    Though I did enjoy it, there should have been more information so we could have been more prepared.

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  37. jewishfishApril 19, 2009 at 3:23 PM

    i quite personally enjoyed it and thought it was cool learning about everyone elses country it was real funny when i found out that the guys laptop had WOW on it haha

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  38. Master TateApril 19, 2009 at 3:28 PM

    I think that it was poorly executed.
    the UN people didn't tell you guys to prepare us properly, so we were unprepared, and then far too many students took advantage of the lack of supervision. It was hot, long, and many kids were disrespectful. The last half of the day was very unproductive.

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  39. Audrey OrtizApril 19, 2009 at 4:26 PM

    All in all, I didn't like it. My least favorite part was the people in charge. Who comes into a school, treats the students poorly, and act as if the students are incompetent? They were acting as if they ran Southwest and WE were the visitors. Plus, no one really knew what was going on and we had to basically lead ourselves because the "chair" acted as if it was a huge inconvenience to help us. A good thing about it was that a few kids really took charge and were able to steer the other confused kids in the right direction, with speaking and with writing resolution papers.

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  40. emma j. michlApril 19, 2009 at 4:35 PM

    it was interesting but i felt that it was too long. also the general assembly didn't have that much order so nothing got done it seemed like. also nobody considered the resolutions so they just voted for all of the them. next year make it shorter.

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  41. UnknownApril 19, 2009 at 5:27 PM

    they did not explain anything so many people were left confused. otherwise i thought it was fine.

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  42. AnonymousApril 19, 2009 at 5:57 PM

    Had Model UN been better planned and organized, it would have been a fun and thought-provoking experience. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
    Entering ECOSOC, none of the students knew where to begin. Nor did the instructors. They seemed just as unprepared and frustrated with the whole situation as we were.
    Things seemed to get better when students wrote their resolutions, most of which were valid and well-done (even without help or instruction from the people running it). When it came time to vote, we were told, "All your work on Model UN has come down to this." What a shame, since just one student who shouted "No" for every vote was the key deciding factor in which resolutions were good and bad.
    Clearly, the whole project needs some revision. Maybe next time students will get more from it than a big headache.

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  43. AnonymousApril 19, 2009 at 6:53 PM

    I didn't really like Model UN. It obviously was not organized well enough because the misunderstanding with the teachers about what they needed to teach us in advance and what the Model UN people planned to teach us ended up with no one really knowing what was going on. Yes, it was completely chaotic (for sure in the GA) and not a great number of people were not taking it seriouly, but I honestly think it would have been 10 times better if everyone had a clear idea of what was happening and what was expected of them.
    The caucuses were pretty much useless other than talking with friends. Most of us were not really sure what we were supposed to be doing anyway! There should have been a difference between "breaks" and "caucuses."
    With quite a few changes, Model UN could potentially be a great opportunity for students. But NOT until those changes have been made!!!

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  44. AnonymousApril 19, 2009 at 7:48 PM

    i think it's a good idea in theory, but definitely wasn't executed well. The people running it obviously had no idea how to control and deal with high school students, and it was unrealistic that a council would be run in an orderly fashion in a stuffy auditorium with over one hundred immature freshmen for 6 hours.

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  45. jewishfishApril 19, 2009 at 8:23 PM

    the chair people should deffinately be younger people, because, they would probably be able to relate to the kids better. The chair in the GA was super uptight.

    -Sam

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  46. UnknownApril 19, 2009 at 9:19 PM

    Overall I thought it was ok. It would've been nice if they would've explained everything though.

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  47. hockeyplayer34April 19, 2009 at 10:25 PM

    good idea, terrible execution. its as simple as that

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  48. UnknownApril 20, 2009 at 11:55 AM

    from maya g:
    i think that the model UN was way too stressful and we didn't really get anything out of it.

    from audrey w:
    i don't think that we were prepared for the model UN at all. I feel like it could have gone a lot better if there was better preparation and better communication between the leaders and the students.

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  49. carolynApril 20, 2009 at 4:18 PM

    I think that the Model UN was pointless and not very fun because we didn't communicate very well and the the chairperson was not very exciting and he got my nerves because he was so unreasonable.

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  50. Peter MathesonApril 20, 2009 at 6:45 PM

    the snacks were stellar. Good work

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  51. JordanApril 20, 2009 at 7:03 PM

    The Security Council worked out really well as far as getting things done was concerned but there were still a lot of people who didn´t know what was going on.

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  52. GraceApril 20, 2009 at 7:11 PM

    Okay i really think that we needed a smaller group for the UN and either a motivation for those who wouldn't get into or just make it optional because i think this had potential but when people just goofed off or didn't play their part it wasn't really interesting. Also we needed to get into more logistics of how we would finance and go through with the plans. I think the leaders should have allowed debates to form and possibly even encourage them. Finally i think that we should have been told more on how to make motions and execute parliamentary style stuff.

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  53. GraceApril 20, 2009 at 7:12 PM

    so as a summery, i thought it had potential... but the way it was, was pretty boring towards the end... it should've been atleast cut in half... the time that is.

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  54. BenApril 20, 2009 at 7:16 PM

    I didn't like it. I didn't know what was going on, it took way too long, and it was really boring. We needed to make it into smaller groups and have it for a shorter time.

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  55. Audrey MApril 20, 2009 at 7:37 PM

    UBER BORING.
    they wouldn't even let us clap!
    ..and chad. man, he was sooo mean!
    they didn't like us at all.
    DID NOT LIKE IT.

    although i did like the fact that we could basically socialize!

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  56. laurenhagestadApril 20, 2009 at 7:45 PM

    i thought it was a waste of a day.
    reasons why i hated it:
    1. too long (they forced us to go up and repeat ourselves like 20 times)
    2. mean leaders
    3. really loud speakers (i think i am partially deaf now)
    4. no control over students
    5. bad voting procedure (some guy said no for all of them and no one noticed)
    6. the word decorum (i want to beat up the person who made that word up!)

    reasons i liked it:
    1. good idea (i am excited to try it in class)
    2. dressing up and seeing others dress up
    3. seeing all the 9th graders together (i swear i have never even seen half of them before)
    4. lunch with all 9th graders
    5. speaking in front of everyone (i was so scared but i just didn't look up and it was really easy)

    i think it wasn't as much the students or staffs fault that is was bad but more the fault of the people leading us. they didn't teach us how to do anything! i was disappointed, but hopefully the one in class will be really fun since mr. romo knows how to talk to us so that we listen.

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  57. MaggieApril 20, 2009 at 8:06 PM

    i thought that it was terrible. the UN people didn't seem all that interested in us having a good time. therefore, only some people enjoyed the activity. it also took way too long. everyone was adgitated by the end of the day including the people running model UN.
    i feel like they thought we would be more prepared for the day and we thought that they were going to explain some things. multiple times people didnt know what was going on and when we asked each other what was going on they would just shout "DICORUM!!"

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  58. HarrisonApril 20, 2009 at 8:12 PM

    I was in the GA, and nobody had any idea about parlimentry procedure. It was a bit like a chicken with it's head cut off. Also, nobody had anything to say coming in to the day, and there was no debate over anything. The chair kept asking for recesses, but nothing got accomplished during these. So, between the time we spent listening to half sirious speeches asking for money, and milling about thinking about our resolutions, there really wasn't much point to the whole thing. I mean, for goodness sakes, I got camel racing as an olympic sport passed! I don't really think anybody took the whole thing very siriously. Hopefully the ECOSOC and SC were better, I heard they were.

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  59. Rachel ArnesonApril 20, 2009 at 8:14 PM

    I think the UN could have been better if it was more organized and smaller groups. Also it would have been better if we knew exactly what was going to be going on.

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  60. Dan_the_manApril 20, 2009 at 9:09 PM

    I actually honestly think that the model UN thing was just a waist of time. I felt like i didn't get any thing out of it and it wasn't what I expected. I didn't even know what to do for at least most of the time. I really wish that we had written our resolutions way earlier than the day we were suposed to use them. A lot of the resolutions weren't even serious and i didn't even feel like putting up my haiti sign to vote for any of them. It could have been A LOT better

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  61. Claire.April 20, 2009 at 9:40 PM

    The model UN thing was awful. The global classrooms people didnt know what they were doing at all, and they didnt explain anything whatsoever. Going into it we had no idea what to expect. And only like 10% of the research we did was relevant at all. It was basically a disaster in the general assembly, although it was better in the security counsel because it was a lot smaller group-like a normal class size- and the global classrooms people could actually manage it somewhat.

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  62. Emily GotzscheApril 20, 2009 at 10:23 PM

    I think the idea of Model UN was/is interesting and could have been very informative had there been more planning time involved. If some very simple things had been taken into consideration by Global Planning the whole event would have run much smoother. For example it would have made a huge difference had they taken an hour at the beginning to explain to us parliamentary procedure, what occurs during a caucus, and what is supposed to be said during a speech.
    I think I was lucky to be in Security council because it was a smaller group that managed to figure things out by themselves and work. Perhaps it would have worked better if everyone was in a smaller group...
    I hope from our feedback Global Planning will be able to turn Model UN around to make it a more fun and informative day for all future delegates :]

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  63. KeiraApril 20, 2009 at 10:59 PM

    I thought the Model UN could have been really fun if it were run better and we were prepared for it. We didn't know what we were doing going into the conference and we were never really told what to do yet were still expected to know what was going on. We didn't know that we had to make speeches so no one was prepared to talk and they were a waste of time. We didn't know how to write a resolution and that took up a whole bunch of time too. If we were prepared and knew what was going on beforehand, and if the whole thing didn't last for six hours, it would have been a lot more enjoyable.
    On the other hand, I really liked learning about my country and I have used what I learned about it in my everyday life. I also really enjoyed going around and talking to other countries and learning about them and what they believed in and what kinds of resolutions they were willing to sign.

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  64. verchode_aApril 20, 2009 at 11:25 PM

    1.They cut me off. I will never forgive them for that. You'd think they would appreciate someone actually trying, helping them out a little bit but NO.

    2. They didn't explain anything or tell us how we were supposed to function. The chair man just said "No Clapping!" and "Looking for another motion for a ten minute caucus..."
    For about two hours I honestly did nothing. Because I didn't know what to do with the whole resolution concept (again they didn't tell us how to write it, only that people needed to sign something. Real specific)

    I think If you tried, it was fun. You could make it fun, and though it didn't work out I did have a good time with everyone sitting around talking.

    My main criticism is that there was no debating or real cooperation going on. We weren't prepared, they weren't prepared, and our day didn't go as planned. They started talking about the awards and saying that they were looking for people who negotiated well and participated fully in debates and new resolutions and it was like "What?! Debate? Negotiation? When did we do any of that?"
    We never did. It was very dissapointing.
    I did have a good time, but not because it was a good model UN that people really got into.

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  65. MollyApril 21, 2009 at 3:14 PM

    reading all these comments kinda makes me happy i was in tennessee for the whole thing.....

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  66. N88 wAhLApril 24, 2009 at 7:25 PM

    And reading your comment made me angry that i wasn't in tennessee.

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