Morgan Gibson, Staff Writer
February 9, 2024
Although Nobles is well known for its fantastic winter athletics, some of the clubs and organizations on campus are also gearing up for a very busy winter of high-level competition. Three clubs in particular, have been busy preparing students for competitions that require months of preparation ahead of time.
Model UN:
To begin, the Nobles Model United Nations club will be sending a delegation to compete in two conferences this winter: Harvard Model UN (HMUN) and Boston University Model UN (BOSMUN). Both of these conferences are multi-day, overnight conferences, taking place at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston and the Marriott Copley Hotel, respectively. At both HMUN and BOSMUN, Delegates spend the majority of their days in committees with various topics, including refugee crises, women’s rights, climate change, and the Roman Empire. The months of preparation for the conference are overseen by the captains of the club, Morgan Gibson (Class II) and Arthi Vithiananthan (Class II), and club presidents Angie Feng (Class I) and Colin Levine (Class I). Faculty Advisor Amadou Seck said, “HMUN and BOSMUN are very different conferences. HMUN is arguably the most prestigious Model UN conference in the world in terms of the number of delegates, but also the number of foreign countries represented.” On average, HMUN hosts around 4,000 delegates with schools bringing their most highly skilled negotiators to compete for one of four potential awards: Best Delegate, Outstanding Delegate, Honorable Mention, and Diplomatic Commendation. Nobles began sending a delegation to the conference after an unexpected blizzard prevented the team from traveling to Georgetown Model UN in DC about 10 years ago, so they instead attended HMUN. In the past Nobles has had success at HMUN with delegation receiving the honor of Best Delegation in 2021.
Mock Trial:
Mock Trial Club hosts intra-team trials in both the spring and fall to train newer club members and ease them into the activity. In the winter, however, many members apply to be on the roster of one of the competitive teams that participate in trials against other schools in a competition hosted by the Massachusetts Bar Association Competition (MassBar). Club President Colin Levine said, “The Bar [Association] holds a mock trial tournament with around 100 schools from Massachusetts, and the numbers have always grown.” All participants in the competition receive one shared case packet that will be used by all teams that year. Schools will have attorneys prepare questioning for both the prosecution and defense, and students will embody the characters of people involved in the case as witnesses. Preparation for the trials begins in November when MassBar releases the case packet, and the Nobles team is selected. Over winter break, attorneys formulate their questioning, and witnesses practice memorization in preparation for the preliminary trials in late January and early February. Levine said, “The club has grown exponentially over my 4 years, which meant that this year we got to have much more selection when choosing our competitive team at MassBar. Our team is comprised of really the best attorneys at Nobles and because of that, I’m really excited, and I think it’s going to be our most successful season yet.”
Ethics:
In early February, the Ethics Club will travel to Tufts for a day to compete in the Tufts Ethics Bowl. Throughout the year, members of the club have participated in intrateam bowls; however, the Tufts Bowl is one of the club’s more competitive events. Every year, the National High School Ethics Bowl releases 16 cases that students must analyze. Ethics Club leader Maya Rottenburg (Class II) said, “For each case, we go through and say ‘okay, these are the important values, and these are the important stakeholders, which are the people who are affected by the case such as organizations and companies, then you go through and you make your stance on the case.’” Competing teams will discuss two of the 16 cases during the bowl, taking turns presenting and defending their positions. Students use philosophical and human values to defend their conclusions, arguing their stance on the case. Rottenburg said, “Usually we will go through and focus on the more human values like autonomy, respect, responsibility, and then discuss philosophical values, for example, we’ll talk about social contract while we are arguing our case.”
Many students who were chosen to participate in these events have spent all year working toward these competitions and preparing to compete at the highest level possible. Despite the competitiveness of these events, students have expressed that not only are they incredibly fun and rewarding, but the connections that they have made through these organizations within Nobles and beyond are some that will last a lifetime.
(Photo Credit: Ben Heider)