Model UN -- Too Close to Home

Oxblog has an amusing post on a model UN in Chicago:

An author in the U. Chicago student paper recently reported that,

This past weekend, Model United Nations of the University of Chicago (MUNUC) hosted one of the premier high school United Nations simulations in the country for the 17th year. Some 150 Chicago students sacrificed time and sleep to teach thousands of high school delegates that, unlike the Bush administration’s policies, diplomacy and debate can work.

Maroon Blog responds:

Personally, if there's one lesson that model U.N. conferences have taught me, it's that the U.N. is almost useless. No model U.N. committee I have been a part of has ever done work that can be described as effective and decisive.

But is a "model" UN supposed to be effective and decisive? Or are students expected to behave like actual UN delegates? For that matter, does the Chicago Model UN program teach high school students how to embezzle like actual UN bureaucrats?

Oxblog's links don't seem to be working, unfortunately, so I can't link to the original article.

UPDATE: Thanks to Rosemary at My Newz 'N Ideas for alerting me to the fact that Oxblog's links are now fixed. Here is the Oxblog story and here is the original.