Model United Nations club began its first full year with the start of the semester. The group holds meetings after school every Friday in sponsor Tim Besse’s room to learn about other countries and to prepare to compete at conferences later in the year.

“One of the main reasons we wanted to create the club is because we noticed that kids in the United States are very centralized to the United States,” senior and co-founder Amber Pryor said. “They don’t really know about other countries or they don’t really know how the whole world works. We want to make sure that they understand that and that we, as leaders, understand that.”

Model U.N. is an educational simulation where teams from different schools act as member nations to the U.N. The number of students allowed on each team varies depending on the rules of the conference, but they always pick a country from a list before attending. They spend the months leading up to each conference researching everything they can about that country, from its political and economic systems to its culture, all in the hopes of more accurately portraying their nation. At the conference, teams representing each country work to solve problems and craft policy, while keeping their own country’s real-life goals and abilities in mind.

“It just seems really interesting to me,” senior Grant Freitas said. “It’s nice to know what goes on in the world and it’s not the “real world” per se, but it’s nice to know the different intricacies and business that happens between countries.”

Seniors Rebekah Apicello, Amber Pryor and Caitlind Walker started the group at the end of last year by holding a few informational meetings, but this is the first year that they plan to compete. They don’t have a set conference schedule yet, but they will likely have to travel outside of the St. Louis area to other locations in the Midwest. They hope to start competing this winter.

“I’m excited to learn more about nations because I don’t know that much yet,” sophomore Rajat Nepal said. “I just want to learn about small nations, big nations, all the nations.”