Questions? Concerns? Comment below!
Happy February, delegates!
Your dais wants you to know that before we were your chairs, we were delegates, too! We know how challenging MUN can be, so this post is dedicated to addressing any questions or concerns you may have about conference.
Worried about public speaking? Having difficulty finding your country's policies online? Wondering how to improve your speeches to make the committee the best it can be?
We're here to help! Comment below or email me at chief@bmun.org.
Hello! I am one of the co-delegates for Qatar. I was wondering if you had any tips on how to make your policies and country position stand out in such a large committee (as is often at Berkley MUN). Considering the nature of committees at Berkley, will general debate/specific speeches be longer? Thank you for your time!
ReplyDeleteMandy (Qatar)
Great question! If you've been following this blog, you should see that one of the key themes we emphasize is being *specific* with every proposed solution.
DeleteThe more analytical, detailed, and thoughtful a solution is, the better the quality of debate will be. Some key things to consider: is my solution specific? is there a way of measuring progress with this solution? *how* will it be implemented? is it realistic?
Often times in MUN conferences, a lot of discussion stops at *what* should be done, rather than *how* it will be done.
For example, if food insecurity were the topic, many people may propose establishing seed banks, and the solution never becomes more specific. Where will these seed banks be established? Who is establishing them? How long will it take to do this? Are private companies providing the seeds? What kinds of seeds will be included? When will the seed stores be replenished?
I encourage you to challenge yourself by asking these kinds of questions when reading over your own speeches and ideas. If the task seems too daunting, your solution may be too overarching or it may be trying to tackle too many unrelated issues at once. If a proposed solution does one niche thing extremely well, that's better than a solution that tackles 52 different aspects of the topic in an extremely vague way.
I also encourage you to read the topic synopsis and the "key resources" from this blog to better understand the expected focus of the debate. The topic synopsis focuses on what has and has not worked in the past, which you should understand in order to build better solutions.
In regards to your second question, we won't have any general debate - only substantive speeches containing proposed solutions.
Thanks for visiting the blog!
Hello! Since this is a co-delegate committee, are speeches going to be limited to a speaking time of one minute thirty seconds, or is there the possibility of a longer speaking time being set?
ReplyDelete- delegation of Germany
Hi Brianna, the default speaking time is 1 minute, 30 seconds. If the committee feels strongly about changing it, there's an option to, but it should provide enough time. Speeches also don't need to be longer just because there are two delegates - you're still proposing the same volume of ideas as a delegation.
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