Delegate Handbook

Greetings from Secretary General

Dear Delegates, Faculty Advisors, and Friends,

It is both a privilege and an honor to welcome you to the eighteenth session of the Chicago Model United Nations Conference. ChoMUN XVIII will be held from Thursday, April 2nd through Sunday, April 5th, 2015 at the Palmer House Hilton in downtown Chicago, and I hope all of you make it to the Windy City to partake in this very special event.

Built upon eighteen years of conference organizing and countless years of competing, ChoMUN has grown from the small brainchild of a few ambitious delegates into a fully-fledged conference – in fact, the largest crisis conference in North America While expanding into an organization of over two hundred staff and eight hundred delegates, we haven’t lost the passion for crisis committees that drove us to create ChoMUN eighteen years ago.

At ChoMUN, we aim to refine, expand, and challenge the traditional notions of what a crisis committee can be. In doing so, we trust our executives, those with experience running and staffing committees, to design fast-paced and flexible committees in order to create the best possible delegate experience. These committees – the core of ChoMUN – range widely in time, space, and format. Our earliest committee, The Court of Yazdegerd III, places delegates in the 7th century Sasanian Empire, where they must stand as advisors to a child king in combatting Persia’s old enemy, the Byzantine Empire, as well as a threat coming from Arabia. We speed forward in time to China’s present-day National Security Council, where delegates can gaze at the world, admire their own power, and seek to expand it in an anarchic world, with a view from Beijing.

However, ChoMUN isn’t just about running national cabinets – delegates will get the chance to build Las Vegas with black money in Viva Las Vegas: Organized Crime and the Rise of Sin City while avoiding terrorism while making sure to make a few bucks in the Indian Premier League, 2009. With locales ranging from Puritan Massachusetts to the Hawaii’s pleasant shores and historical personages ranging from Elizabeth I to Fidel Castro and Deng Xiaoping looks to be the most exciting ChoMUN yet! Lastly, as ChoMUN turns eighteen, we’re launching our very first Ad-Hoc Committee of the Secretary-General, which has me wishing I could compete at ChoMUN this year.

Ultimately, we’re not only looking to run some of the fastest and most flexible committees, but also a world-class and smoothly operating conference. All of ChoMUN Secretariat is working to ensure that this year’s ChoMUN is the best yet, and to that end we welcome any suggestions and/or feedback from anyone involved with ChoMUN in past years, whether as a delegate, advisor, or a staffer. See you in April!

Regards,

Jesse Z. Orr
Secretary-General – ChoMUN XVIII