IASIMUN Observer, nr. 3, 2012

IASIMUNO B S E R V E R

The

Third issue. Sunday, November 18, 2012

“Take this burden off their back!”

The last day began with one last attendance list and a funny moment offered by the chairs, Alina Bojescu and Ciprian Cristea, who decided to flip a coin, in order to see what (...)

IasiMun - To be continued!With great regret, we must declare this 4th edition of IASIMUN

closed. It has been a memorable 3 days, in which bonds were created, everybody having had a good time.

Read more on page 3!

Interview with the Chaipersons of the ECOSOC Committee

This is not the first time Ali-na Bojescu is attending the IasiMUN conference, as she has been part of the Press

Corps in the past editions. Although she is one of the chairpersons of the ECOSOC committee this year, she didn’t want to let go of her passion – journalism, so she has also chosen to be part of the Press Corps.

On the other hand, Ciprian is one of the first who took part in IASIMUN, but his inter-view speaks for itself.

Read more in page 6

2 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012THE IASIMUN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

Game over. Next level: IASIMUN 2013EDITORIAL BOARD

Head of the Press CorpsDaniel Vasile

News EditorAlexandra Vrînceanu

Features EditorAntonia Niţă

Photo EditorAlexandra Stelea

ReportersAnda Pascu

Alice MunteanuBianca LohanDiana PăvăloiRaluca Irimia

Alexandra Stelea

PhotographersAnastasia Anea

Alexandru ArgheroiuŞtefan Nemţanu

LayoutDaniel Vasile

with the much appreciated help from

Robert Pintilie

and

Peace Corps VolunteersMelissa Royer

Theron LaBounty

Iasi Model United Nations 2012

Aleea Nicolina 4, National College “Emil Racovita”, Iasi

www.iasimun.org

IASIMUNO B S E R V E R

The

ALICE MUNTEANUIAŞI

The last day of the fourth edition of IasiMUN started with a debate on the ap-

proved resolutions from three of all the committees: Human Rights, Political and Environment. As the ECOSOC Committee fig-ures a different role in the United Nations, it plays a different part in our conference too. While the other committees are present in the General Assembly, discussing just the most important topics, the ECOSOC debates take place in the same location as usual. Not just as a reward for the most ac-tive and dedicated delegates, but as an impulse for the others to take them as models, prizes were

given for the best delegate and best speaker.

The ending of this confer-ence was seen as a final amazing experience, which we hope influ-enced all of the participants in a positive way. All of the delegates seemed to be very nervous about the Closing Ceremony because they were eager to find out if they made a good impression among the Chairpersons. While the end-ing brought smiles on people’s faces, many of the delegates were sad because it was over so quickly. IasiMUN was a good way for each and everyone to inter-act with their fellow delegates, as they had to put their ideas to-gether in order to come up with brilliant resolutions. Furthermore, not only the delegates, but the teachers, members of the Press

Corps and Administrative Staff were pleased to take part in this remarkable event, which couldn’t have taken place without the help of every organizer.

The Administrative Staff were amazed that all the things turned out better than they had expect-ed. They did not encounter any problems during all the three days of the conference, as every-thing has gone just as planned. This edition turned out brilliantly and nobody had complains about the course of the events.

In our opinion, the Press Corps team, this edition of the IasiMUN Conference continued its fourth year in the same tradition of marvelous and fruitful debates, which was developed at Mr Pi’s initiative.

THE PRESS CORPS

3THE IASIMUN OBSERVERSUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012

NEWS

The bitter-sweet end

ALEXANDRA VRÎNCEANUANTONIA NIŢĂIAŞI

With great regret, we must declare this 4th edition of IASIMUN

closed. It has been a memo-rable 3 days, in which bonds were created, everybody hav-ing had a good time. According to the chairpersons, the par-ticipants have improved their debating and public speaking skills. Whether they were allies or adversaries in the commit-tee, they all looked back with regret that this experience is over. As they all anxiously waited to hear who won the prizes for best delegate and best speaker, they had mixed feelings of impatience and

nostalgia. In what concerns the or-

ganizing team, all of them agreed that it was yet another successful edition, as the par-ticipants came well-prepared and ready for action. We all agree that we must keep the tradition going, telling others about this conference and its benefits.

As we could see this year, rumors of our conference reached other corners of the world (Belgium and the USA). Therefore, it is highly impor-tant that people learn of this conference. This way, with a higher number of participants, not only does this confer-ence gain a lot, but the whole world. As they say, “The more, the merrier!”

With high hopes that next year’s edition will be at least as good as this one, we close an-other chapter in this bestseller wrote by the “Emil Racoviţă” Naţional College of Iaşi that has sold more copies than “Twilight”.

CLOSING CEREMONYILINCA ROMAN

ENVIRONMENTBest Delegate:

The delegate of JapanAlexandru George Stoian

Best Speakers:The delegate of Democratic

Republic of CongoAdrian Covaci

The delegate of RussiaRosemary Bornstein

The delegate of DenmarkCamelia Diaconu

POLITICALBest Delegate:

The delegate of USA Sivliu Ungureanu

Best Speakers:The delegate of Israel

Alexandra ChiriacThe delegate of Iraq

Bogdan BorşThe delegate of Canada

Lucian Pârâu

HUMAN RIGHTSBest Delegate:

The delegate of NorwayOlivia Apopei

Best Speakers:The delegate of Germany

Ştefana NazareThe delegate of Uganda

Adela Alexandra IacobovThe delegate of USA

Corlijn Reijgwart

ECOSOCBest Delegate:

The delegate of NorwayIrina Apopei

Best Speakers:The delegate of Camerun

Bristena-Georgiana MantuThe delegate of Germany

Ana-Maria Vochiţă

IASIMUNawards


GENERAL ASSEMBLY NEWS

The last but most important fight

ALICE MUNTEANUANTONIA NIŢĂIAŞI

The last day began with one last attendance list and a funny moment offered by the chairs, Alina Bojescu and Ciprian Cristea, who decided to flip a coin, in or-der to see what resolution comes first. However, immediately after, the formal atmosphere got back on track, brought by the usual “Order in the house, please!”

The first resolution was on the topic of cholera in Congo, submitted by the delegate of Cameroon, who brought the im-portance of education in poor countries again into attention, as this is one of the main causes of the actual outbreak.

On the other hand, the del-egate claimed that one of the so-lutions would be urging “the USA to provide a substantial amount

of treatment and financial aid in Congo, due to the breach of the bill implemented by Barack Obama.” However, the delegate of Norway stood up, asking why the USA would help the coun-tries affected by disease, if the president had stated that the USA would not support foreign countries, thus the UN cannot oblige the USA to do so.

The same delegate, who is always in contradiction with the delegate of Cameroon, but with just as smart remarks, held an against speech, affirming that “the current plan contains funda-mental flaws!” and that “you can’t do anything with a solution that is not effective.”

The regions that are most exposed to the infection with cholera are the undeveloped, South African ones, and especial-ly those which are situated next to the Pacific Ocean, as during natural disasters and monsoon

seasons, the chances of it spread-ing are even larger.

As a summary of the three days, “ECOSOC is special. And I mean it in a good way”, as stat-ed by one of the chairpersons, Ciprian Cristea. Even us, the Press Corps, although we are not sup-posed to be biased, can’t help it! ECOSOC is a unity of strongly motivated and inspired young adults, ready to take the mat-ters into their own hands, and do something for the better.

CHAIRPERSONS IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLYANASTASIA ANEA

Andy and John were neighbours. Andy was a poor farmer while John was a rich landlord.

Andy never bothered to close the doors and win-dows of his house at night and he was a sound sleeper. Although he had no money, he was peaceful and happy.

John was very keen on closing the doors and win-dows of his house at night because he could not sleep well. He was always con-cerned that someone might break open his safes and steal his money. He envied the peaceful Andy.

One day, John called Andy and gave him a box-ful of cash saying, “Look my dear friend. I am blessed with plenty of wealth. I find you in poverty. So, take this cash and live in prosperity.”

Andy was overwhelm-ingly happy and spent the day being joyful and happy. Night came. Andy went to bed as usual, but that night he could not sleep. He went and closed the doors and windows, but he still could not sleep. He began to keep on looking at the box of cash. The whole night he was disturbed and worried.

As soon as day broke, Andy took the box of cash to John. He gave the box to him, saying to John, “Dear Friend, I am poor. But, your money took peace away from me. Please take back your money.”

THE TALE OF THE DAY

Dear Friend, I am poor!by Bianca Lohanand Diana Păvăloi


ECOSOC NEWS

Cameroon: “Take this burden off their back!”

The last day began with one last attendance list and a funny moment

offered by the chairs, Alina Bojescu and Ciprian Cristea, who decided to flip a coin, in order to see what resolution comes first. However, imme-diately after, the formal at-mosphere got back on track, brought by the usual “Order in the house, please!”

The first resolution was on the topic of cholera in Congo, submitted by the delegate of Cameroon, who brought the importance of education in poor countries again into at-tention, as this is one of the

main causes of the actual outbreak.

On the other hand, the delegate claimed that one of the solutions would be urging “the USA to provide a substan-tial amount of treatment and financial aid in Congo, due to the breach of the bill imple-mented by Barack Obama.” However, the delegate of Norway stood up, asking why the USA would help the coun-tries affected by disease, if the president had stated that the USA would not support for-eign countries, thus the UN cannot oblige the USA to do so.

The same delegate, who is always in contradiction with the delegate of Cameroon, but with just as smart remarks,

held an against speech, affirm-ing that “the current plan con-tains fundamental flaws!” and that “you can’t do anything with a solution that is not effective.”

The regions that are most exposed to the infection with cholera are the undeveloped, South African ones, and espe-cially those which are situated next to the Pacific Ocean, as during natural disasters and monsoon seasons, the chanc-es of it spreading are even larger.

As a summary of the three days, “ECOSOC is special. And I mean it in a good way”, as stat-ed by one of the chairpersons, Ciprian Cristea. Even us, the Press Corps, although we are not supposed to be biased,

RALUCA IRIMIAANDA PASCUIAŞI

THE DELEGATES IN THE ECOSOC COMMITTEE`ALEXANDRU ARGHIROIU

can’t help it! ECOSOC is a uni-ty of strongly motivated and inspired young adults, ready to take the matters into their own hands, and do something for the better.


INTERVIEW

“We expect the delegates to rise up to the challenge.”

Interview with the Chairs of the Environment committee, Alina Bojescu and Ciprian Cristea

This is not the first time Alina Bojescu is attending the IasiMUN conference, as she has been part

of the Press Corps in the past editions. Although she is one of the chairper-sons of the ECOSOC committee this year, she didn’t want to let go of her passion – journalism, so she has also chosen to be part of the Press Corps.

On the other hand, Ciprian is one of the first who took part in IASIMUN, but his interview speaks for itself.

Ciprian CristeaMost of us who have participat-

ed in the previous editions surely re-member you because of your enthu-siasm and great skills. Please share some of your thoughts regarding the previous editions.

All three previous editions were great in their own way. For me, the most special edition will always be the first one. Back then I was just a delegate, representing South Africa in the Environment Committee. Everything was new, but the training sessions cleared everything up. I re-member how nice it was to go back to school on Thursday evenings and learn new things and also to have lots of fun. And then came the conference. Absolutely brilliant! I met many new people, made some new friends and really, I had a blast! I honestly really miss being a delegate. It is that great! We’re going to fast forward a little bit to 2010 now, when I applied for the position of chairperson and, to my surprise, got accepted.

Chairing felt quite odd at first to

be honest, but proved just as reward-ing. Not to mention all the things I have learned when helping to organ-ize things. You see, back then the team was much smaller and we had to do lots and lots of little things. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still just as much work, maybe even more, but it’s easier now because there are more people in-volved. And this is great! It is a sign of progress. Back then I also came in con-tact with teaching, because we had to have some training sessions, right? During the training sessions I tend to prefer a more non-formal method, as I find that it is simply more effective for certain things. Still, this doesn’t mean that we will sacrifice the formal at-mosphere of the conference for a few cheap laughs. In 2011 I felt that I need to experience another committee, so I chose Political and ECOSOC, but only for the third day, since ECOSOC is not a part of the GA and one of its chairs had to be there since he was the Deputy Secretary General. To my surprise, from a chairperson’s point of view, the committees are not that dif-ferent! The debates are just as heated

and the delegates show the same amount of passion in what they are doing. Both the 2010 edition and 2011 edition have had great dele-gates. Some of them really shined though. I just love doing some things when chairing.

Even though I actually quite like to issue warnings and do role calls, my favorite activity is giving

the awards. It is extremely reward-ing for me to see the pure undiluted happiness in the delegate’s eyes, es-pecially considering the fact that, at least in my view, they truly earned their awards. To sum it up, some of my dearest memories are actually from IasiMUN, and to be honest many more are sort of related to the conference.

Where does your passion for debating come from?

Honestly? From IasiMUN itself. When I first applied I was just curios. It really seemed like a challenge and a great opportunity. And I was right. The chairs were really inspiring. I don’t know if they will get to see this, but I would like to especially thank Madalina Darabana, Radu Valeanu and of course, Mr Pi. They held the training sessions I chose to attend. If I would have chosen not to attend any train-ing session at all I probably Iwouldn’t be here today. I think that becom-ing a student at this high school also helped. In my view, bringing a proper argument regarding an issue is some-thing that everyone should know.

Another soft skill that every-one should have is the ability to talk

in front of a crowd, and this is an-other thing that you can practice at IasiMUN. Leave the so called stage fright at home. It is just excess lug-gage. Why bring it with you?

What about collaborating with Mr Pi during the first edition of IasiMUN? You must be quite proud of yourself for being among the ones who brought the conference to our city.

Mr Pi truly is an amazing person. There is just so much to learn from him. During the first year our collabo-ration was limited only to the training sessions I mentioned earlier. Sadly, he had to leave on the first of June 2010. Even with this in mind, he still had the time and passion to teach that year’s new generation of chairs everything that we need to know to do our job properly. I think I still have the note-book in which I have written the chair lines while Mr Pi was dictating them.

Very few people can do what he did and continues doing. There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power, they have a certain authority. Then there are those who lead. You don’t follow them because you have to, you fol-low them because you want to. Bear in mind, no one told me to do what I did and what I am doing. It is simply what I want to do. Mr Pi’s passion and drive is absolutely contagious!

What do you expect from the delegates this year?

I expect them to challenge them-selves to rise up to the challenge. Their job is not easy. I still remember my first speech that I held in front of an audience, which coincidentally was my first opening speech. I simply couldn’t make eye contact with any-one and I was shaking. And it wasn’t just my hands. Even my voice was a lit-tle shaky, to say so. It was that scary, but extremely rewarding at the same time. By lunch time on the second day that fear was gone. I had more impor-tant issues at hand than stage fright. I had to have the resolutions on which I as a co-submitter pass! I also want to see interesting, heated and fruitful debates, just like that. A good debate is just as entertaining for me as it (hopefully) is to those involved.

I also hope that this year’s conference will prove to be the amazing, life changing experience it was for me. Again, if it weren’t for IasiMUN I wouldn’t have done many of the things I ended up doing.

RALUCA IRIMIAIAŞI

Alina BojescuFirst of all, tell us about your

previous experience regarding IasiMUN.

During my first IASIMUN experi-ence, I was a Reporter for the Human Rights committee and I was lucky enough to assist the debates. As ob-server, I was impressed with the pas-sion that everyone put into the whole conference, especially into playing the roles their countries required.

Why did you choose to apply as a chairperson and also part of the Press Corps this year?

I applied as chairperson because I wanted to challenge myself, and also to help shape up the conference along with my peers. As journalism is my passion, I also wanted to show my support for the IasiMUN Press Corps.

Considering this is your senior year of highschool and therefore, of MUN, what are your expectations for this edition of the conference?

I have rather high expecta-tions, since this is our fourth edition of IASIMUN. I believe that the whole team has learned from past mistakes and that our experience and love for debating will help provide a great ex-perience for everyone attending!

What made you more interest-ed in ECOSOC than in the other 3 committees?

In my opinion, the ECOSOC com-mittee is very challenging, as the top-ics discussed raise both social and economic awareness. In this commit-tee, social problems - such as women’s workforce - are tackled from a differ-ent perspective, which can be inter-esting, although a bit difficult.

CIPRIAN CRISTEACHAIRPERSON OF THE ECOSOC COMMITTEE

ALINA BOJESCUCHAIRPERSON OF THE ECOSOC COMMITTEE


INTERVIEW

Interview with IasiMUN advisor and teacher of English, Mrs. Victoria Sechelea

The IasiMUN advisor, teacher of English, Victoria Sechelea, gave us an interview, as co-

ordinator of the conference since the first edition.

As this will be your fourth year as the advisor of IasiMUN, what do you think distinguishes this year from the rest?

I do not think there is any-thing new. There should not be dramatic changes within the con-ference. People come, people go: only the delegates change. Otherwise, the things have fallen into place.

What have you learned in the past years that you have im-plemented this edition, in order to make the conference more successful?

I have learnt how to encour-age young students to become delegates. In the previous edi-tions, I was more cautious, yet an early experience as a delegate triggers an earlier change in men-tality and attitude.

How will this conference turn these theoretical topics into real-world, practical solutions?

It is difficult to do that, MUN’s are not meant to bring new ideas and feasible solutions to change the world overnight. You will hopefully see things change in a few years, and some of the people who will do it may be today’s del-egates. Some of the solutions may

be today’s resolutions. In actual fact, how will the

participation in IasiMUN help the delegates “change the world”?

The participants assume a role and an attitude; they learn to be aware, to care and to be pro-active; they begin to think critical-ly and to look for the leader inside themselves.

They experience diploma-cy, are aware of the future of our world, shape their skills of negoti-ation and make their voice heard. Do you not think this will help them change the world?

Do you believe that you will continue this IasiMUN tradition for the years to come?

If you, young people, help me, I may.

ANASTASIA ANEAIAŞI

MRS. VICTORIA SECHELEA AT THE OPENING CEREMONY

ANASTASIA ANEA

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: THE SECRETARY GENERAL, CNER’S PRINCIPAL, MRS. VICTORIA SECHELEAANASTASIA ANEA


SOCIAL EVENT

There is always room for having fun

Last night, they all surprised us with their talent and their lack of inhibitions. With or with-out a real sense for music or not, they interpreted songs of differ-ent kinds, from the funniest to hard rock.

They proved once again that, no matter how much they work, there is always room for having fun.

The big surprise was, this time, for our chairpersons, at the initiative of the Chair of the Environment Committee, George Oprea. They were given

personalized T-shirts, with the stamp of IASIMUN and their special nicknames on them, as following:

George Oprea – EmperorAnca Apostol – SpiritAmada El-Sabeh – MaharajahRobert Pintilie – DancerCiprian Cristea – Top GunAndrei Coca – BabyMihai Păun – CaesarBianca Vasilache – RoyaltyMaria Mateescu – ComandanteAlina Bojescu – PrincessPaula Gherghel – Angel

Ilinca Roman – GingerThe last T-shirt, but may-

be the most important, was made for the MUN Advisor, Mrs Victoria Sechelea, whose nick-name was the “Dean”.

From the middle of the par-ty, inspired by a delicious cock-tail, this Features Editor con-cludes, moving towards the dance floor.

ANTONIA NIŢĂIAŞI

We are sure no one would have

imagined that delegates had such a passion

for music!

DELEGATES AT IASIMUN KARAOKE EVENTROBERT PINTILIE

CHAIRPERSONS AT IASIMUN KARAOKE EVENTROBERT PINTILIE

Documents

IASIMUN Observer, nr. 3, 2012