The Experimental Committee: US Presidential Advisory Committee on Technological Development MUNUC 33
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The Experimental Committee: US Presidential Advisory Committee on Technological Development MUNUC 33 1 The Experimental Committee | MUNUC 33 LETTER FROM THE CHAIR ____________________________________________________ Dear Delegates, Welcome to MUNUC 33! My co-executive Kelsey and I are incredibly excited to welcome you both to MUNUC and, more specifically, to MUNUC’s first-ever Experimental Committee. We hope that the committee structure we have designed for you will be challenging and fun, and most importantly that this weekend will be one to remember. My name is Max Johnson, and I am a fourth-year at the University of Chicago. I study pure mathematics and my end-goal is to become a research professor in Algebraic Topology. This year I will be applying to graduate schools and will soon be learning where I will be headed next year for my Ph.D. Outside of mathematics, I am an avid rock climber and overall fan of the outdoors. I love to travel and try to knock countries off my bucket list as often as possible. You are all ahead of me in Model UN: I did not start until I was in college. I started off all-in; however, and in my first year I was a member of the competitive team, an AC for ChoMUN (the college conference), and an admin staffer for MUNUC. I have since run several committees at the college and middle school level, but because I was on the Executive Committee for MUNUC last year, this is my first high school committee. I hope you will all go easy on me! In general, I think people would consider me a fairly light hearted and laid-back moderator. That said, I do think that order and respect are necessary for a fun Model UN experience. I ask that you all allow me to moderate with a light touch by agreeing with those norms and the ones set out later in this background guide! I can’t wait to meet you all! Max J. 2 The Experimental Committee | MUNUC 33 LETTER FROM THE CRISIS DIRECTOR ____________________________________________________ Dear Delegates, Max and I are ecstatic to welcome you to the first iteration of the MUNUC Experimental committee! We’re excited to delve into this fast-paced exploration of science policy and alternate American history, and I can’t wait to see what delegates bring to the table backroom. A bit about me: I’m a third-year at the University of Chicago majoring in Molecular Engineering, Physics, and Creative Writing. At the time I’m writing this letter, I’m also trying to add Gender and Sexuality Studies, so stay tuned for details on how many theses I’ll be working on next year. I do physics research and over the past few years I’ve jumped from solar cells to batteries to bug eyes to satellites to levitating particles. I’ve also been doing MUN for, like, forever, and it’s a huge part of my life. I serve as Vice President of the UChicago MUN traveling team, and as an executive for ChoMUN, our collegiate conference. Outside of school and MUN, I love to write poetry and fiction, and I’ve recently gotten very into audiobooks-- I listen while cooking, while in the shower, and while playing copious amounts of Wizard101. I grew up right outside of DC and I’ve worked for NASA for some time, so the intersection of politics and technology hits quite close to home. That being said, I’m really looking forward to seeing delegates’ visions for the committee’s trajectory, and I encourage everyone to develop expressive, bold arcs that they can get excited about. I cannot, cannot emphasize enough how much I want delegates to integrate their own interests and big questions into their backroom. The mechanics of this committee are designed to allow delegates to experiment, and we encourage everyone to focus on long-term arc elements that they normally wouldn’t get to do in standard continuous crisis committees. This committee will be fast paced and more challenging than a normal continuous crisis in many regards. We recommend this committee for students who have done at least one crisis committee before and have a general sense of how continuous crisis works. I will be going over my expectations 3 The Experimental Committee | MUNUC 33 for crisis notes and crisis arcs at the beginning of the committee and I will be available to answer questions and give feedback all weekend. However, I encourage you to prepare ahead of time and have a sense of what you and your character might want to do over the course of the few decades we’ve outlined in the background guide. To this end, please check out the crisis preparation modules on the MUNUC website. I can’t wait to meet you all. Best regards, Kelsey Gilchrist, Crisis Director 4 The Experimental Committee | MUNUC 33 DELEGATE EXPECTATIONS ____________________________________________________ To ensure your committee can be a fun and comfortable experience for all delegates, we would like to set some norms and expectations. Both your Dais and MUNUC itself heavily condemn all forms of homophobia, sexism, racism, transphobia, and general prejudice. While we hope this goes without saying, we also realize that one cannot discuss several decades of history without entering time periods in which these issues were central and unequivocally important. We ask that these issues be engaged with respectfully, if at all. Most importantly, if you are unsure whether you are engaging with such a topic respectfully, we ask that you either refrain from doing so or clarify with the Dais. We have intentionally designed our committee so that you can be fully immersed in the topics at hand without straying into potentially problematic territory. We encourage you to do so! Of even more importance is treating your fellow delegates with respect. We would like to avoid any personal insults and keep roleplay friendly. No one in committee should ever be confused as to whether a remark was intentionally offensive, and this is the standard with which we will evaluate these cases, if necessary. Of course, arguing over policies and roleplay-based feuds is part of a fun crisis committee. We ask that it be clear that such conversation is entirely unserious outside of the context of the committee. The most important rule is that if you are unsure whether a comment, directive, note, or speech will be offensive, refrain from doing so at least until you can speak with a member of the Dais. The backroom especially will take this very seriously, and we would prefer to avoid having to shut down a problematic crisis arc. In terms of competitive expectations, this committee was designed to challenge delegates to really focus on long term crisis plans with overarching themes and goals. Delegates will be rewarded for plans that have a clear vision and motivation and plans for which there was clear forethought in how to develop the arc over time periods. 5 The Experimental Committee | MUNUC 33 COMMITTEE MECHANICS ____________________________________________________ Mechanics Given the extraordinary timespan of this committee, one might think of each committee session in two distinct ways. For the majority of each session, the committee will be a regular crisis committee. Crises will occur, driven by a combination of your own notes and backroom input, and you will work together to write directives to solve them. Time will flow normally during these portions of session. Committee sessions serve a second purpose, however. In between certain sessions there will be significant time skips. The world you have so far built will evolve based on the decisions you have made. These updates will be presented to you as one big crisis update at the beginning of the next session. While the executives of your committee will write the overall story of what occurs in between sessions, you will each be given a chance to more explicitly control what will occur in your personal backroom schemes. This will be done through a ‘Big Ask Note’ (explained in detail below) in which you will be allowed to make larger, more complicated requests that might reasonably occur over a several-year period. Time Skips (Frontroom) The majority of the front-room experience will reflect that of a normal crisis committee. The only exception to this will occur at the very beginning of each new time period, following a time-skip. At this time the backroom will present a lengthier version of a crisis break in which we brief you on what has occurred in the elapsed time between sessions, inform you of new consequences of the decisions you made in previous sessions, and present the overarching challenges and technologies you will be confronting in the new time period. Following this update, you will, of course, be allowed to ask questions and clarify your new situation. This update will also include an urgent crisis for you to 6 The Experimental Committee | MUNUC 33 immediately act upon. Committee will then continue in a standard way as you write directives and respond to updates. Time Skips (Backroom) The backroom will progress normally during most of the sessions as well. Unless you are asked to specifically write a note for an upcoming time skip, you should write notes as normal, using resources you have collected to execute plans, gather more resources, or otherwise influence the world around you. The main difference will be that directly before we change time periods, you will be given time to focus on writing a longer, more detailed note in which you plan to do with your resources during the time that elapses in between sessions.