Successful Return to and from the North

By Annabel Alder

Between the 29th of November and the 1st of December, #TeamLSE took the more scenic bus route to Nottingham for NottsMUN 2019. Arriving in the city centre (alongside our friends from across the Strand), we had a quick turnaround before registration, so explored the local culture and visited the very memorable ‘Amazing Thai Café’, which certainly lived up to its name with noodles for the shocking price of £2.50.

After a memorable opening ceremony, we went straight into Committee. For most delegates, this was the first conference they’d attended, but regardless of experience, everyone went right ahead to put our training into action in an interesting variety of scenarios. Debate got serious pretty quickly in some committees, with Senegal passionately defending its right to arm itself in space in UNSC and the US having to defend itself against one of the chairs on its environmental policy, since Trump memes had been used throughout the background guide. However, all delegates demonstrated our persistence and by the end of our first committee session we were ready to pile into our Ubers back to the hotel. Thanks to a carvery on the doorstep, the delegation ate together at a very reasonable price, and after bonding together on a group trip to LIDL to pick up various German treats (not all of which made it back to the hotel) and enough soya milk to qualify for a Large Delegation, we were ready to call it a night.

The next day brought many challenges, across a broad range of committees. In SOCHUM, delegates were constantly put on the spot by their chairs, who introduced an impromptu discussion topic on oil to test delegates’ knowledge of country policy and ability to retain it. Delegates embraced the Boy Scout spirit, and made use of equipment in their committee rooms, with some finding that moveable whiteboards were the only feasible way to illustrate the true catastrophes of the climate crisis. Chairing a Crisis cabinet, LSE’s Crisis Officer Max Hammer was called into a meeting at the start of the day where the Director accidentally let slip that the hostage had died, and had to spend the rest of the day pretending that he didn’t know since rescuing this hostage was the aim of the Committee. A crisis delegate was executed for treason on Saturday afternoon, and subsequently couldn’t interact with any other delegates. In UNSC, a seemingly comprehensive (and monumentally bipartisan) resolution on nuclear non-proliferation was abruptly *not* passed on Saturday afternoon after a clause-by-clause voting procedure so frustrating that the chair elected to play ‘Lofi Beats to Get Brexit Done to’ in the hope of calming certain delegates down. Some chairs also made delegates give a spontaneous minute-long summary of their position paper in the middle of the conference. A few delegates even ventured across the aisle (or Strand) and made lasting friendships with KCL delegates within their committees!

In the evening, some delegates headed out to the formal dinner and dance, while others elected to divide the remaining time between research and enjoying the bounty of LIDL from the night before. After waiting up to midnight so that we could begin Advent with a rendition of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I want for Christmas is you,’ #TeamLSE headed to bed at a pretty reasonable time of night, ready to make our final impression on day 3. And make an impression we did – with a number of delegates receiving honours despite being a very inexperienced delegation.

The day ended less smoothly than anticipated - after #TeamLSE made their way to Nottingham city centre via Uber (our total fare must have been hundreds due to our remote location and the apparent lack of regular weekend transportation in Nottingham). After a delicious dinner at the local Wetherspoons, we trekked back to the coach stop in temperatures hovering around zero, but then had to wait there for two hours after our original coach was cancelled, and the replacement needed to turn around to get petrol. Shivering and yawning, #TeamLSE returned to Victoria Coach Station around 2am, but with a solid sense of pride in our weekend's achievements

Congratulations to the following award winners:

Annabel Alder – Outstanding Delegate (UNSC)

Sharon Zheng – Outstanding Delegate (SOCHUM)

Jonas Bokelmann – Outstanding Delegate (Crisis)

Caitlin Tan – Honourable Mention (DISEC)

Congratulations to the rest of the delegation for their hard work throughout a challenging weekend:

Bess Zhang

David Zhang

James Till-Nehme

Kaiynaat Dara

Marina Liot

Priyanka Nair

Shamil Muzaffarli

Thanks are most definitely in order to our Head Delegate Max Hammer (and seasonal co-Head Delegate Jonas Bokelmann), for some truly Nobel Prizeworthy quotes, and without whom we’d probably still be waiting at a bus stop in Nottingham.