By Karen Podorefsky
The first weekend of February Hopkinton High School’s Model United Nations (MUN) club participated in a conference at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The fourteen delegates and advisor, Shannon Allberry, tallied a number of awards and recognition.

Outstanding Delegate awards went to Elise LeCrone, Justin Roshak, and Dan Genkin, with Dan Liberta gaining an Honorable Mention and Paige Guarino receiving verbal commendation. Additionally, Dan Quigley and Leah Raczynski took homewards for Position Papers.

Hopkinton MUN has been increasing their share of awards in recent years. Senior Elise LeCrone, MUN President, noted, “You can work really hard and get an award or work really hard and not get an award. Everyone put a lot of effort into research and preparation and it paid off.”

The goal of MUN conferences is to discuss topics and write resolutions about  pressing global issues.  Hopkinton competed agains teams of delegates from California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, China, India, Korea, and Romania. The HHS delegation represented the nations of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Chile, Ethiopia, and Sudan, as well as Amnesty International, in the competition. This close knit team of MUN Students spent thirteen and a half hours in committee sessions from Friday to Sunday with the goal of creating resolutions for a wide range of topics from drug trafficking to new and emerging energy technologies.

Apart from gaining recognition, Paige Guarino, the only Hopkinton freshmen to compete at the conference, commented,  “I knew I would enjoy it, but the conference was even more fun than I thought.”