At YUNMUN, each committee has a chairperson and each chairperson has a gavel. This gavel is used to call a room to order or to finalize a resolution. It has taken on a persona of its own, so that the gavel is revered amongst the chairpersons, and the delegates fear the sound of its pounding.
Well, the end of day 1 at YUNMUN XXI seemed to come to a close with very little incident. The 12:30 am curfew for delegates was easily enforced, as students were exhausted from the excitement of the Super Bowl (commercials) and from their first committee sessions.
However, as the hallways quieted down a strange phone call went out to the BT chaperon:
It seemed that in one of the committees, the gavel had disappeared. And the chairperson was certain that he had noticed said gavel peeking out from the bag of the Austrian (that's us) delegate. The chairperson had gone so far as to ask the delegate to open the suspected bag, but, alas, this search revealed nothing.
The BT chaperon was asked to follow up on the incident, but he could not shake the feeling of familiarity with the story. For when the sons of Yaacov go down to Egypt to seek sustenance during a famine, their youngest brother, Binyamin, has a silver cup planted in his bag of food and is arrested and imprisoned for his actions (if you don't know the whole story, it turns out that the governor is actually brother #11, Yosef, and he just wants to give his older brothers a hard time).
After some intense negotiations, all agreed that resolution of the incident could wait until morning.
So, at breakfast, an internal investigation launched by the Austrians confronted the delegate about the gavel. Perplexed and adamant in innocence, the delegate searched the bag one final time --- only to produce the gavel.
The gavel was returned to its rightful place in the committee room and no one is the wiser. Still, security around the Austrian delegation has been beefed up and tensions are high (no, not really).
This will, undoubtedly, be one for the ages.
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