Rivals extend an olive branch at MUN Conference
For the first time in five years, Peninsula High and Palos Verdes High collaborated to plan the PV vs. Pen MUN Conference. On Feb. 27, students from both high schools came to Peninsula High to revive the tradition of a PV-Pen MUN conference.
Model United Nations (MUN) is a school club where students act as delegates from certain countries and work together in order to find solutions to world issues. At MUN conferences, participants present their speeches and debate ways to resolve conflicts or issues with the other delegates.
Though the process was difficult and time-consuming, the outcome was worth all the hard work and dedication put into planning. Peninsula’s organizers for this conference, secretariats and seniors Katherine Liu and Karen Hadidjaja, had many responsibilities set upon them in order to make the conference happen.
“We’ve been planning this conference for months and talking to the PV coordinators,” Liu said. “Our adviser [Dr. Jim Dimitriou] also talked to their adviser and we started meeting up to work together to bring this plan into reality.”
Liu and Hadidjaja also worked together with Palos Verdes High’s conference organizers to ensure everything was running smoothly and according to plan.
“Planning this conference took several months of hard work and dedication from both the Pen MUN and PV MUN Secretariats,” Hadidjaja said. “We needed to meet with the Secretariat members from PV to make sure that all of us were on board and updated.”
Although Peninsula and PV High ran into communication, time management and planning problems the last five years, this year both schools were able to finish all the necessary tasks needed in order to hold the conference.
“A Peninsula MUN Conference has not happened in so long because there are countless tasks that need to be completed throughout the entire year and most people don’t have enough time,” Hadidjaja said. “Our Secretariat made it a priority to exceed expectations this year and really show how passionate we are about the club.”
After all their meticulous planning, Liu and Hadidjaja were finally able to experience the conference they had managed to make a reality.
“My favorite part of the conference was probably the opening and the closing ceremonies,” Liu said. “Both were really phenomenal experiences and we got to speak in both, but [we] spoke longer in the opening ceremony.”
Instead of negatively impacting the delegates at the conference, the long-standing rivalry between Palos Verdes High and Peninsula High actually boosted their competitiveness positively and helped both teams do the best that they could.
“We got along very well and it was actually refreshing because the rivalry wasn’t what everyone made it out to be,” Liu said. “It was more of a friendly rivalry which is good because it combined the collaboration along with the competition and it just made all of us want to work harder.”
After many long years of the PV-Pen Conference’s absence, Liu and Hadidjaja were proud to help plan and host this conference and bring it back once again.
“I have formed the most amazing relationships through MUN, and the experiences that I have all shared with the people in MUN are some of the best from my high school experience,” Hadidjaja said. “We loved the PV-Pen MUN Conference because it was another memory to add to our collection.”
