This year, Sayreville welcomes back its Model United Nations club, re-founded under new management after a year-long hiatus, returning with a renewed ambition to be the first of its kind to represent Sayreville in an officially sanctioned competition.  Under Presidents Kamil Szczech and Ojas Chitnis, both sophomores, the club hit the ground running as it moved through introductory meetings and approaches its first official debate on October 29th.

While their impressive ambition has carried the club pretty far already, the Sayreville MUN remains open to new members and is eager to diversify their ranks. New members are encouraged to attend any regularly scheduled Monday meeting in Mr. Howard’s room or to seek out board members able to provide a proper introduction to prospective entrants.

Based on the plans the Model United Nations has voiced thus far, new members will find themselves of more importance to the club now than ever before. This stems from the changes in the club’s structure beyond its executive board.  Having learned from the mistakes that rendered it inactive last year, the club has changed its core mantra towards a more focused, goal-driven view. Rather than the open-ended style of previous years, this new generation of the Model UN opened its year with a series of lesson plans geared towards training new members in procedure, research, and rhetoric, making this year the perfect time for the uninitiated to learn the ropes of the club if they missed out before and found the intricacies too daunting.

Beyond that, the new leadership places a heavy focus on fundraising to work towards trips to competitions and to moderate actual United Nations conferences. While fundraising plans are not yet prepared to be publicized, the board insists the sale is set to be promising, so students are advised to keep their eyes open for the upcoming opportunity to show their support for the club through financial backing.

Club president Ojas Chitnis, when asked how he himself viewed the club he’d worked so hard to recreate, explained it humbly as “ a place to learn and to meet new friends”, and, on a humorous note, “one that looks great on college transcripts.”

With the board elections having just passed, the new appointees have expressed that the club is set to kick it up a notch – not only moving further towards official debate at a much faster pace, but using the Model UN as a means of connecting to other key vocations. Thus far, this has been evidenced through a student-run seminar regarding world languages and the art of translation, viewed through the lens of its paramount importance in the UN and any international affairs, and is slated to feature educational presentations on anything from geography and the art of debate to the governments of different countries across the varied geopolitical landscape.

As such, Chitnis’s words seem to have held true – the club’s foremost appeals lie in an opportunity to learn more about the world and other students across Sayreville, teaching communication and research skills that can serve a Sayreville student moving onwards towards employment or higher education in any field, politically focused or otherwise. Both literally and figuratively, the center of Model United Nations is ‘United’: creating a unifying force for academic minds across Sayreville to cooperate, compete, and prosper.