*The following recap was provided by Isabelle Klinghoffer, a committee chair at NYUMUNC*
The incredibly busy crisis room at NYUMUNC
On April 3, 2014, Steve Caputo watched on as hundreds of crisis staffers congregated before him. Impatiently pacing back and forth NYUMUNC’s crisis room, he was making mental notes of the 13 committees, hundreds of staffers, and thousands of crisis updates he would soon be responsible for. Then, he spoke.
“NYUMUNC V is a go. I repeat, thirteen committees are a go!”
Steve’s commands dispersed staffers to the four corners of the crisis room, laptops in hand, crisis updates in mind. His orders were designed not to merely instruct, but to establish the direction this landmark thirteen-way JCC conference was to take. Prominent CNN Correspondent David Frum once noted that coordinating the activities of eleven South American nations was improbable at best. Little did he know that a group of college students at New York University were exceeding his wildest expectations.
The different crisis directors at Closing Ceremonies
At the other end of the business school’s hallway, thirteen committee rooms were set into motion. Projectors lit, updates displayed, NYUMUNC V had officially begun. Simulating the South American nations of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Union of South American Nations, and the Chinese-U.S. Ad-Hoc, NYUMUNC V was a true meeting of meetings.
Over the next eighty hours, hundreds of delegates hailing from Boston to Tel Aviv experienced a different kind of crisis conference. At NYUMUNC, they had the ability to communicate with a crisis room, their committee room, and delegates from any of the other twelve committees. Not only did the actions of a single delegate thus affect the members of their own committee, they also had the potential to influence the decisions of hundreds of other South American public officials. Such was the interconnectivity of NYUMUNC’s committees that the murder of a Venezuelan government official Saturday morning prompted 3 press releases from neighboring nations by noon and 2 inter-committee meetings by 3 PM. From the creation of an exclusionary South American energy ring to an endless stream of cross-border corruption allegations, NYUMUNC V vividly portrayed the complexity of South American relations.
Earlier this month, the New York University Model United Nations Conference simulated a thirteen-way Joint Crisis Conference. Some will view it as a niche conference that abates the desires of crisis delegates. For others, the temptation to continue simulating large GAs will be too great. Yet this 13-way JCC Conference represents the role crisis committees should play in the future of Model United Nations. Crisis committees should simulate the world not as it ought be, but as it truly is.
Congratulations to:
Harvard University-Best Large Delegation
MIT- Best Small Delegation