After about nine months of hard work and preparation for LYMUNII (Lyons Township’s Model United Nations conference), Cristian Gonzalez ‘16 and about 60 other LT MUN members ran LYMUNII at LT. Gonzalez took on the crucial task of overseeing 36 schools, 700 delegates and 40 LT MUN students, who ran 20 different committees.

“I feel an immense pride in representing the work that LT MUN can do,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez was Secretary General of LYMUNII, meaning he was in charge of organizing the conference. In total over 100 LT MUN students participated in the event.

The top schools participating in the conference received the awards of Best, being first place, and Outstanding, being second place, in large and small delegation categories, respectively. Large delegations brought 25 or more students and small delegations brought less than 25 students. The Outstanding large delegation was Carl Sandburg, and Outstanding small delegation was William Fremd, Best large delegation was St. Ignatius and Best small delegation was Whitney Young.

MUN began preparing for LYMUNII in May of 2015. MUN decided which students would be in charge of running the conference, like Gonzalez, in May. Since then, MUN had to pick chair people, topics for the conference and deadlines for research papers the delegates would write based on the chosen topics.

“It was a real team effort and I’m really proud of the club as a whole for what we did,” MUN advisor John Cronfel said.

MUN also received the support of LTTV. Bill Allan, advisor of LTTV, created over 20 crises videos for LYMUNII. Each committee used the video content for their own topics. The videos were made to be like newscasts similar to how a real life crisis would be revealed. Allan used LT staff members to play the roles of news anchors. After watching the videos, students would work to resolve the crises in their committees. The videos gave students a problem to solve in a realistic way, unlike other schools who do not use video at their conferences.

“[LTTV] brings a level of professionalism that sets us above any other school that we visit,” Cronfel said.

Allan created the videos months in advance. Creating the videos included planning, production and editing which demanded hours upon hours of work.

“I think we contributed significantly [to LYMUNII],” Allan said. “Without our video content, the crises would just be verbally explained by a student and would not give that realistic, immersive experience.”

LTTV did not only create crises videos, but also live streamed coverage of the opening and closing ceremonies to provide a record of the event. LTTV crew was essential in making LYMUNII a success, Allan said.

“It wouldn’t have happened without Bill Allan’s support,” Cronfel said. “LTTV brings a level of media professionalism that distinguishes LT MUN.”