Finally, after a year of intense competition, countless conferences, and endless preparation, CHS’s MUN season had finally come to a surprisingly quiet close. Or at least, that’s what everyone thought was going to happen. To wrap everything up, a final in-house conference was arranged by the MUN officers for May 27-28. However, in order to commemorate their final high school MUN conference, officers & graduating seniors Wesley Chu, Shaina Gottlieb, and Yonathan Solomon; juniors Aiden An and Ido Kaufman; and sophomores Daniel Mao and Hannah Barrs prepared something completely unprecedented: an AD-HOC (on-the-spot) conference that was essentially a massive game of government Impostor, with an added extraterrestrial twist.
What made the conference so shocking was the fact that it was originally framed to be a standard Crisis conference (conferences with rapid new developments); the big AD-HOC reveal wasn’t until the conference actually started. Just prior, the officers had made a large presentation detailing the procedure of a crisis meeting, adding to their credibility. They even made all delegates write position papers, complete with false topics on lunar mining as well as the militarization of space, further reinforcing the belief that the conference was just going to be another standard in-house.
Well, it turned out that the actual topic, or “crisis,” was an asteroid impact set to collide with the United States within 72 hours, with each department (delegation) tasked with finding a solution to either destroy or deflect the asteroid before it would destroy the western hemisphere. However, what many didn’t know was that there were actually 6 alien “moles” hidden within the cabinet, with the second objective being to correctly identify & eliminate all 6 moles while simultaneously dealing with the asteroid. As moles assuming the roles of nuclear submarine commanders, both my delegate and I were tasked with preventing the destruction of the asteroid, which was actually an alien device that would facilitate alien assimilation into human society, and preventing the other non-moles from discovering our true identity. “ I never expected it,” stated Hanil Yoon, my fellow mole, “I remember the topic being a big shock when I first saw it.”
Arguably the most important character / factor of the conference was the ability to contact through the “backrooms,” (not the liminal spaces) which were just the officers working behind the scenes to produce new events, or “crises,” to keep the story going. Contacting the backrooms would be done using crisis notes, or notes written to the backrooms requesting that a specific event / development take place affecting either one or all departments. Once in a while, the officers would halt the conference to declare a “breaking news,” a declaration of specific events picked by the backrooms out of the many event requests from the multitude of crisis notes that would ultimately affect the direction of the conference and force the departments to react appropriately.
Throughout the conference, each department expressed vastly different opinions. Some felt as if uncovering the moles should be top priority, while others felt that the asteroid should be dealt with first. Eventually, after several directives were passed (mini-legislation that could be passed with a ⅔ voting majority from the departments), the asteroid was destroyed through a joint DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) effort involving the use of satellite railguns to evaporate any harmful debris, shifting attention to finding the mole.
However, even this proved to be a difficult task, as every department was torn over the method to discover who the mole was. One proposal was a joint effort using every single intelligence department to root out the mole as quickly and efficiently as possible, while others resorted to mandatory biological testing to identify DNA anomalies and even another MKUltra project to research mind-control. “We wanted to rat out the mole as quickly as possible,” explained Daniel Mao, “In order to stop then from interfering with our plan, that was our top priority.” I tried to stall everything as much as possible, communicating with the backrooms to divert attention with each breaking news report. In the end, no definite plan was made, resulting in a chaotic frenzy of accusations and lies in order to determine who the moles were. It honestly seemed like a re-enactment of the Salem Witch Trials.
The finale was probably the most intense part of the entire conference. Wesley walked up to the speaking center, pulling with him the large whiteboard with the delegations’ final list of moles. After careful review, he began to list the correct moles out of the ones on the list. DNI. SCOTUS. Press Secretary. Secret Service. FBI. In the end, only one was incorrect: the Defense Secretary. I had gone completely under the radar throughout the conference, leaving everyone stunned when my partner and I stood up during the mole reveal. “It was really surprising,” freshman Sejin Kim recalled, “you guys seemed so trustworthy and all the delegations shared our information with you… I never even suspected you guys once.”
In sum, I’d say that this was probably one of, if not the most, fun conference I’ve had this year. I enjoyed talking with the other delegates and drafting resolutions for such an interesting topic. This said, though, it’s only one small part of the action-packed Model UN Program! For those looking for thrills like these, I’d highly recommend joining it!
