White Station’s Model UN team traveled to New Orleans November 8th to compete in Tulane’s Model UN conference, WAVEMUN. To prepare for the conference, each delegate in General Assembly had to write a one-page paper on each of the topics; for Crisis Committees, which are committees with fictional and historical situations, only one topic was required.

“We had to write a one page position paper for each topic: alt-right and mass incarceration. I just took notes, wrote the position paper and went to the conference,” Krishna Dasari (12) said.

Although very few of the delegates from White Station received an award, they gained much  from the experience.

“I reinforced in my mind that you have to stay humble and not think you are the best and fight for what you want,” Annie Zhao (10) said.

As this was merely the second time Tulane sponsored WAVEMUN, many students said that the conference could have been organized differently.

“There was a lot of logistical misunderstandings. There were times where I didn’t feel motivated at all to continue because of understaffing and the way the conference was run,” Jake Du (11) said.

Despite the delegates’ criticisms of the conference, many still acknowledged there were areas they could have improved in themselves.

“If I better adapted to the situation instead of getting bummed out about it and then just not putting in the effort, I could have gotten a lot more takeaway and made the experience a lot better,” Du said.

Spending over 48 hours together, the trip encouraged  bonding with students the delegates had never talked to before.

“It was sad that it was all over because it was fun hanging out with all of your friends,” Zhao said.

Some students even developed better relationships with the chaperones.

“That was one of the highlights of the trip, just talking a lot about the world and his [the chaperone’s] take on certain things. It was really interesting to have that one on one with a teacher,” said Du.