For all students interested in International Relations, wanting to meet new people or simply hash out a good argument- the Model United Nations (MUN) is the place for you. The club with approximately 15 members meets biweekly. Workshops are held to prepare club members for conferences such as the UC Berkley MUN conference, which was held in February, or the UCLA MUN conference that will be held in April.

Skyline’s MUN club president, David Latt, has been participating in MUN since his sophomore year in high school. As a student from a different nation, David’s experiences have been profound.

“Coming from a country like Burma where we have isolationism, understanding other countries was a fascination for me,” said Latt.

David founded the Skyline’s MUN club as a freshman. In MUN terminology, he is considered the secretary-general, to model the actual position in the U.N. David is now participating in his fourth year of MUN and seems to love every minute of it.

“It feels like I am actually in a legislative body where I am hearing people as countries speak their positions on different thing,” said Latt. “You get to experience the life of a diplomat and you get to role-play as a country and step in the shoes of policy makers and what they do for a living.”

Another student, Eric Iturribarria joined MUN with the intention of soaking up knowledge to benefit his international relations major and hopes of a career with a government agency. Eric shared about his first workshop experience with Skyline MUN.

“I had just gotten into MUN,” said Iturribarria. “I had a little bit of research done but I just didn’t know what to expect. When we first started the workshop, I quickly just tried to throw myself out there, expecting to fail or make a fool of myself, to learn from those mistakes. And that’s exactly what I did.”

After discovering the ins and outs of what a conference would entail, including a lot of tricky lingo, Eric deemed the workshop a positive experience.

“I learned the rules of the MUN conferences. With confidence and diligence, I now feel prepared to engage in future workshops and conferences.”

The MUN club hopes to host two conferences next year with students from other campuses to raise funds and get more student involvement.

Anyone wanting to get involved in MUN can contact the club president, David Latt, or adviser, Jeff Diamond for information.