On Saturday, October 8th, forty five members of Brewster’s Model U.N club ran their own presidential race, with eighteen students being Republicans, sixteen being Democrats, and eleven members running the event who were responsible for deciding the results of the other students actions. The thirty four non-crisis members of the club picked real life Republicans or Democrats to portray and then split into two rooms to start campaigning to get their candidate elected. Students spent the day deciding on advertisements, submitting statements to the public, organizing rallies, and undercutting the opposing party to make specific states swing in their party’s favor. Every plan they came up with was reviewed by the crisis members and Tom Mullane, our club advisor, who would then decide the consequences and effects on the electoral map. Crisis was also responsible for coming up with roadblocks and emergencies that the other students needed to respond to.  How well the Republican or Democrat side responded to these emergencies also affected their chances at winning.

Participants had full control over which direction they took their party, as long as they could justify their actions without straying too far from the role they were supposed to be playing. Both sides came up with various proposals and actions to sway the vote in their favor. On the Democratic side, President Obama (sophomore, Sarah Borsari) helped balance the party budget and convinced the rest of the party to agree to fix the court system.  Elizabeth Warren (junior, Autumn Gerard) convinced just enough people to support a compromise on the issue of immigration to temporarily influence voters in Texas and Arizona. In the Republican Party, a motion passed that promised to implement gun safety and responsibility courses for children nationwide to help minimize gun related accidents, and made a clear set ‘pathway to amnesty’ for those here on working visas and legal immigrants with no criminal record. In addition to party-wide agreements, individual members could take actions on their own like making donations, holding fundraisers, or even participating in illegal dealings if they were willing to risk getting caught. Underhanded tactics were used throughout the conference, from spies and sabotage to actual attacks and threats.

The events of the conference caused some very unusual results, like New York voting Republican, making for an unpredictable finish. But by 5 o’clock the conference was ended with Hillary Clinton winning by just two electoral votes, 270 to 268. After the conference, awards were given out by the chairs of each committee based on performance and participation. From each party there was a ‘best delegate’ (Sarah Borsari for Democrats, Angelo Casale for Republican), ‘outstanding delegate’ (Olivia Jaspers for Democrats, Erin Renzi for Republican), honorary mention (Jane Scinta for Democrats, Colton Booth for Republican), and just one for best rookie (Autumn Gerard, Democrat).