Cate Delegates Travel to New York for Columbia Model UN
January 23, 2025
By Pari Malik ’27
It takes three sugar cane to make one piece of paper. Confused? I was too. That was until I experienced the first trading session at the Minecraft Village Council meeting during Columbia’s Model United National Conference and Exposition (CMUNCE). Columbia University has one of the top Model United Nations programs in the nation and hosted its 24th conference this year. I traveled to Columbia alongside 13 other members of the Cate family. We were all given the opportunity to participate in different conferences that taught us about global conflict, negotiating, problem-solving, public speaking, and so much more.
Going into the conference, Columbia had given us a selection of committees to choose from, ranging from the General Assembly committees with the United States Senate, Pirates of the South China Sea, the Election of 1992, and the World Health Organization to the crisis committees consisting of Money Heist, International Court of Justice, Greeting Artificial Intelligence, the Arctic Race for Space, and so many more.
I participated as a cane farmer in the Minecraft Village Council Crisis committee and took away so much from the experience as a first-time delegate. Crisis committees tend to have fewer people and are based on more niche topics, with the Minecraft Village Council definitely being on the more unique side. Delegates in my conference were instructed to act as Minecraft villagers navigating daily village struggles. There were requirements for survival and obstacles thrown at us with each passing day in the Minecraft world. Alliances were formed, notes were exchanged, and zombies caused viral diseases to infect our village, but each member of the council was able to escape and solve each case that came our way, making it out until the very last day.
My fellow council members and I went through several different forms of government and currency in order to determine what would best suit the village while also trying to defend ourselves from nearby enemies and intruders. Each villager had something valuable to contribute through the role they played in the village. This aspect is what I most enjoyed, as the world could not function without every villager pitching in to share their supply and protect one another.
While this was the Minecraft world, I found it enlightening to see how people from all around the real world could come together and see how these villagers’ struggles are parallel to the ones in the present-day world, and how it was up to a group of high school students to try and solve any problems that came our way. 
About Model UN
CMUNCE is the premier crisis conference for high school students in the United States. This year, the Columbia International Relations Council and Association (CIRCA) will host CMUNCE XXIII on the Columbia University Morningside Heights campus in New York City from January 16th to 19th, 2025.
The hallmark of CMUNCE is its fast-paced crisis committees, which allow students to react quickly and solve real world problems in international affairs. The conference offers a diverse blend of committees from different historical periods and regions of the world. The committees of CMUNCE are small, most under 25 delegates, to provide students with the opportunity to participate in debate and actively learn.