Richland Northeast’s 2010 National High School Model UN winners are (front row) Alyssa Greenhouse, Helen Robertson, Lynn Washington (faculty advisor), Maggie Lawrence, and John Parvin (co–presidents), (middle row) Logan Burney, Brandy Oleson, Rachel Lourie, Emily Padget, Karli Wells, Karen Ekeh, (back row) Ahmed Alshareef, and Hermon Whaley. The Richland Northeast High School Model United Nations team reclaimed the number one position at the National High School Model UN conference in New York City recently. RNE took the Award of Distinction at the conference, which included 150 teams from across the country plus 20 foreign countries — for a total of more than 2,300 delegates. RNE’s Model UN team has won first place for 18 of the past 20 years.

The 13 RNE Model UN students represented Malaysia, which proved to be an excellent developing country since the theme of this year’s conference was global economics.

“Economics is difficult for most high school students, and our understanding of the subject certainly helped our team,” said faculty sponsor Lynn Washington.

The students prepared policy papers on the topics for the seven committees Malaysia was assigned to represent. The papers are just one part of the conference. Students must know parliamentary procedure and work to build consensus and compromise in their committees.

“I knew when the conference staff and delegates were all talking about Malaysia that we were doing extremely well,” Washington added.

“Another key to the team’s success were this year’s presidents, Maggie Lawrence and John Parvin, who worked all year to prepare the team for this challenge.”

In addition to Lawrence and Parvin, the team members were Ahmed Alshareef, Darby Shuler, Rachel Lourie, Emily Padget, Alyssa Greenhouse, Brandy Oleson, Helen Robertson, Hermon Whaley, Karen Ekeh, Karli Wells, and Logan Burney.