School life / Model United Nations
At Model UN, the Bathroom Is a Point of Personal Privilege
Model United Nations hands teenagers a country, a placard and a rulebook. The rulebook covers everything, including leaving the room.
In 2010 an intern at the United Nations Association of Greater Boston sat in on the last few hours of a middle-school Model UN at Northeastern University. The delegates were debating animal trafficking, passionately, sometimes heatedly. When it got rowdy, the two moderators simply murmured "Decorum," or tapped a wooden gavel on a plastic table, and, she wrote, the students immediately quieted down.
Two interns murmured "Decorum," and a room of middle schoolers went quiet. I have said "decorum" at dinner. The middle one asked what it meant. I told him. He asked what happens if you don't have it. I am still working on the answer.
The students had absorbed the language of the UN so completely, she noted, that they used it for everything, including requesting "a point of personal privilege" to use the bathroom.
That is correct procedure. The Hilton Model UN delegate packet defines a point of personal privilege as a request about your own comfort: leaving to use the bathroom, say, or asking for the room to be cooler. It also instructs delegates to avoid saying "I" in committee and to speak as "the delegation of" their country.
The delegation of the United States would like the thermostat raised two degrees. The delegation of the youngest objects. The delegation of my wife has the remote and is not taking questions.
At Saint Francis High School in California, a student described the same atmosphere in the school paper in 2025. Forty or so students in suits sitting up straighter at "Decorum, delegates!" and the bang of a gavel, plus "an occasional huff from a frustrated committee chair." She had joined as a freshman with no experience and a fear of public speaking. At her first conference she spoke once. By the time she wrote, she had attended three and still felt nervous every time she stood up, and she stood up anyway.
She also recalled a stop at In-N-Out in full business attire.
Every great diplomatic career begins with a burger in a blazer. A delegation still has to eat, and a point of personal privilege covers fries.
I have adopted the procedure at home. When the youngest wants to leave the table, she now raises a placard, a cereal box, and requests a point of personal privilege. I recognize her. She leaves. The middle one has started raising the cereal box too, and so far nobody in our house has found a rule against it, which is how real diplomacy works.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Hannah Wheeler, Model UN, United Nations Association of Greater Boston, July 21, 2010 unagb.org
- Hilton Model United Nations delegate packet hilton-mun.org
- Skye Dean, Saint Francis Model UN, The Lancer, April 4, 2025 thelancer.sfhs.com