Many Mondays of practice finally came to fruition for the MSMS Model Security Council club when the group attended the 44th annual Mississippi Security Council competition at Mississippi State University on Mar. 10.

The primary objective of the competition was to represent your respective country as accurately as possible and introduce legislation that would benefit your country and the rest of the world. The P-5 countries China, France, Russia, United States and United Kingdom have the power to veto introduced legislation, so it was essential to ensure the aforementioned powers agreed with proposed bills. The participants followed strict rules of procedure that mimicked the actual United Nations Security Council’s system of discussion.

For many delegates, this experience was a first.

“I had a lot of fun at the conference. I’ve always enjoyed spectating world politics, so to be in a room with others acting it out was a unique experience for me,” senior Nathan Guy said. “I represented France with Vishnu Gadepalli, and even though neither of the resolutions we presented passed …, I enjoyed debating other schools and being in the position to make decisions on real-world issues.”

Due to spring break conflicts, MSMS MSC was only able to compete on one of the two days of the competition. Thus, they were ineligible to win any awards.

Senior Andrew Yu, a seasoned veteran in debate and MSC co-president, said, “MSMS delegates performed really well, and even though we weren’t able to win any awards since we didn’t go to both days of competition, our school most likely would have won many awards if we had stayed. The officers structured our meetings to be pretty much exactly the same as the actual competition, so they were very beneficial.”

MSMS’s strong performance did not go unnoticed. Beyond the scope of the competition, many went out of the way to help other school delegations.

Vaibhavi Mahajan, a competitor from Northwest Rankin High School, said he was “super impressed” with the MSMS delegations in his council.

“Not only were they all incredible speakers, but they also didn’t hesitate to help out our school with any questions we had since it was our first year competing,” he said.

Besides the business professional dress of competition and tension-filled debate, many MSC members agreed that the competition was enjoyable.

Junior Geethika Pollepalli urged aspiring participants to be bold and overcome public speaking apprehensions: “If you want to do MSC, don’t be afraid to speak up! By speaking up, you are able to put your opinions out there and can improve your speaking and debating skills.”

Guy said he believes even if you’re not interested in politics, MSC can be exhilarating.

“Anyone that is at least slightly interested in MSC should definitely be a part of it! Even if you are not interested in the political/diplomatic aspect, it’s very fun to debate the people in your council chamber and verbally destroy enemy nations,” he said. “For those that have already decided to join, I would start researching the general political consensus of the country you wish to represent so that if you actually do get to represent it, you’ll have a better feel for how the country stands on issues presented to the council.”