Topic Summary

It is 1518 in a city known as Strasbourg. All is calm until suddenly a woman takes to the streets and starts dancing. There’s no music, no festival, no cause for celebration, yet she dances for hours uncontrollably. Witnesses of this scene then begin to mimic her, joining in on the dance, their movements wild, compulsive, and unrelenting. As time goes on, what was a bizarre spectacle devolves to crisis as more and more people are consumed by this dancing frenzy. Without being able to stop, people’s feet bleed, they fall to hunger and thirst, and many die.

As members of this committee, you are tasked with addressing this mysterious plague. As time progresses, more questions are raised instead of answers, but circumstances are clearly growing dire. What is causing this outbreak? Illness? Possession? Hysteria? Or something that humanity has yet to face…Will you be able to stop this craze before it spreads to the entire city, or worse, the world? Or will you too dance until you’re dead?

Director’s Letter

Greetings delegates!

My name is Justin Ricketts and I am so excited to serve as your director for the Dancing Plague Committee at this year’s HNMUN! I am a junior at Harvard, concentrating in both Neuroscience and English (and/or possibly with a secondary in Global Health & Health Policy). I come from Lake Worth, Florida (about an hour north of Miami). Surprisingly, I don’t love the beach, but unsurprisingly, I’m still not the biggest fan of the Boston winters...

My first experience with Model UN came as I randomly chose to join Harvard’s Model UN team my freshman spring, and I haven’t looked back since. Beyond Model UN, I love books and music more than anything. Reading has been hard recently, but I am still on my phone at 12:00 AM every Friday morning to listen to every song that has been released. Truthfully, I’m a sarcastic, chronically-online, former pre-med, who loves word games (my Wordle streak is still going strong).

When it comes to committee, I hope this will be a unique, thrilling, and memorable experience for all of us. I value, in myself and others, creativity above most, so I’m excited to see which of many paths we will fall on, as I hope you all are. Are you ready to dance, delegates?

See you soon,

Justin Ricketts

Director, Dancing Plague of 1518

Director’s Letter

Good Day Delegates,

Allow me to be one of the first to welcome you to the 72nd iteration of Harvard National Model United Nations, and–even more importantly–to the Dancing Plague Committee!

My name is Victor Bowker, and I am a Junior at Harvard College. I am pursuing a concentration in Government as well as a Language Citation in Mandarin.

Born and raised 45 minutes south of Cambridge, in Scituate, Mass, I grew up on the water. Spending my summer days tanning and teaching sailing was the ultimate gig, and it will forever be the best job I’ve ever had. If you ever have the opportunity to learn the art of sailing, I highly recommend it.

At Harvard, I compete with the Intercollegiate Model United Nations where I almost exclusively compete in crisis committees–other than that horrific GA in NYC a few springs back…don’t ask. I staffed both HMUN and HNMUN last year as a Director/CD and I am so excited to be directing a committee for HMUN and crisis directing for HNMUN this year again! I consider myself a very exciting person, and you should expect crisis updates and committees to follow in that direction.

Delegates, I know some of you to be quite fierce. I encourage you to bring that ferocious dedication to the committee room, through interesting notes, broad and complex arcs, and compelling–but sparse–JPDs.

Crack open a Red Bull, refill your stapler, and prepare for the most exciting committee of your college career.

See you soon,

Victor Bowker

Director, Dancing Plague of 1518