MUNger Games: a recap

Photo by Rio Fisher

DISCLAIMER: This article contains spoilers for The Hunger Games.

Background Knowledge

Model U.N. is a club on campus centered around debating political issues at conferences that take place at colleges/other high schools. Every year, ERHS hosts a “Mockmun,” which is a low-stakes conference that has a fun fictional theme rather than dealing with real political issues. This year, it’s Hunger Games themed, which gives it its name: The MUNger Games.

There are two types of conferences: crisis committees and general assembly. General assembly conferences are what you would typically expect Model U.N. to be like: every delegate represents a country arguing over a real-world problem. Crisis committees are very different, where each delegate is assigned to a character/person in a certain historical/fictional timeline, and each delegate has their own personal agenda. An important difference that sets crisis committees apart from general assembly is the backroom notes, which are notes that delegates write throughout the conference and send to the backroom to facilitate the movement of the plot. Essentially, if a delegate wants something to happen plot-wise, they would write a letter to the backroom that contains as much detail as possible relating to their desired outcome.

So, everyone who participated in the MUNger Games was assigned to a character from the series, and each character has an overall stance on the political state of the conference. They also developed a secret mission that they try to carry out over the two days. About a week before the MUNger Games took place, every delegate received an email from the chair (which are the people who facilitated the conference), containing the background guide along with lore about their character that would help them determine their stance in response to plot changes during the conference. For context, the MUNger Games took place in an alternate timeline after the third book, where many prominent deceased characters had been revived (so many of them had unsettled disputes with the people that caused their death).

Before any conference, there are two key vocabulary words that delegates must be familiar with in order to understand the format of the conference: moderated caucuses (mods) and unmoderated caucuses (unmods). During the mods, delegates give speeches about their stance on certain topics (ex. general solutions), with the intent of finding other delegates who share similar views and potentially team up in the unmods. During the unmdos, delegates have the opportunity to walk around the classroom and form blocs (teams) with other delegates who share the same positions.

Key Events from the MUNger Games

The MUNger Games took place in an alternate timeline after the third Hunger Games book, where the presidential position for Panem is unfilled. Prominent deceased characters were also brought back to life for the conference, which led to many disputes between the formerly deceased delegates and the people who participated in their death.

At the start of the conference, delegates received news of a terrorist attack in District 5. A group of bullet trains were bombed and the remains were covered with pro-Capitol propaganda. This sparked discussion: was District 13 the cause of these attacks or was it an outside terrorist group? If it was District 13, why did they choose to attack politically neutral transportation vehicles in the districts?

After this news was released, two main blocs were formed during the first unmod. The first one was the pro-Hunger Games bloc that wanted to bring back the Hunger Games to maintain order in the nation at such an unstable time. The other bloc was the anti-Hunger Games bloc led by Venia, who wanted to disassemble the Capitol’s presidential system of government and start a republic. 

Each bloc supported one of the two presidential candidates: Seneca Crane who wanted to bring back the games but with criminals instead of district children, and Gale Hawthorne, who was set on creating a system of government where each district has representatives who all have equal weight in executive decisions.

Then, nuclear weapons were found missing from District 13, and some connection to the terrorist group had been discovered. However, news soon arrived that Coin had been working with the gamemakers the whole time and had been planning the terrorist attack as a part of her scheme to take control of Panem. Right when anti-Coin sentiment started to rise, it quickly deflated in a wild turn of events, in which this propaganda was soon proven to be false and created by generative AI.

Venia, the leader of the anti-Hunger Games bloc reigned over the conference with strategically composed speeches and grand plots to thwart Crane’s presidential campaign. This led to a striking amount of hatred toward Venia, which ended up leading to her gruesome death. The contents of the backroom note that led to her death was filled with many peculiar strange details… starting with a cat spilling coffee which triggered a massive chain reaction of events that killed her.

The conference ended with presidential elections for Panem’s next era. There were the two main candidates: Gale Hawthorne and Seneca Crane, but Astrid Everdeen joined in at the last second. Gale’s plan was to abolish the games and dismantle the current presidential system of government once he became president. Seneca’s campaign was to continue the games, but instead of featuring district children, it would contain war criminals. However, when this received backlash, he announced that he’d be entering himself into the first Hunger Games after the election to prove his worth to Panem. And finally, Astrid’s entering into the election came as a shock to everyone, as she hadn’t previously campaigned like the other two, but she believed that she would be a better fit having raised Katniss her whole life. In the end, Gale won the election by a sweeping 10-6-1, and immediately gave up his position to transform Panem into a republic.

At the end of the conference, four awards were handed out: “best delegate” to Venia (Dixon Brown), “outstanding delegate” to Astrid Everdeen (Evan Foxx), “honorable mention” to Finnick Odiar (Sophie Seifert), and “best backroom notes” to Cesar Flickerman (Faye Deetsch).

Overall, the conference was a lot of fun! Congratulations to all delegates who participated, and especially the ones who received awards! And for any future delegates: may the odds be ever in your favor.