WILTON – A group of 28 students from Alvirne High School in Hudson and High Mowing School in Wilton met Saturday, Feb. 14, for a Model United Nations Conference.

The conference was a simulation exercise at which students took on roles as member countries on the United Nations Security Council as the council attempted to resolve the ongoing conflict between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed separatists.

Students endeavored to faithfully present the national identity of their countries, and to speak and act out of their understanding of the strategic interests of the countries they represented on the Security Council.

“The goal of the conference is to acquaint students with current affairs by having them engage with real-life world issues,” High Mowing history teacher Cary Hughes said, “and it teaches cooperative problem solving.”

Model U.N. also gives students the opportunity to build public speaking and public debate skills in a formal setting.

Hughes, who organized the conference with Alvirne social studies teacher Jeff DiPrizito, said Model U.N. provides opportunities that other organized debate settings do not.

“With debate club, the goal is to win,” Hughes said. “With Model U.N., it is about finding common ground. Students are asked to wrestle with very intractable conflicts and work their way through them, finding creative solutions that all sides can agree on.”

“Model U.N. engages students way beyond a textbook or a lecture,” DiPrizito said. “It is a holistic way to learn public speaking and to practice building interpersonal relationships.”

The solutions students came up with to resolve the conflict included:

The creation of a U.N. peacekeeping force to enforce a 30-mile demilitarized zone.

The creation of a regional free-trade zone that would include Russia, Ukraine and the European Union to address some of the economic tension that helped create the conflict.

A resolution that would have created a task force to discuss how the breakaway regions could be given more autonomy within the Ukrainian government without having to have them permanently break away from Ukraine.

This was the eighth consecutive year that DiPrizito and Hughes have collaborated to host a Model U.N. Conference, and it is the 25th anniversary of the
creation of the High Mowing School Model U.N. program.