MUNITY had the pleasure of interviewing Peter Loy, the Treasurer of the THIMUN Board of Directors, as he reflected on his final year at the conference. In addition to his position as Treasurer, he also manages the admin staff from local schools, ensuring that debate is able to flow freely within committees, and solving challenges that arise throughout the week.
MUNITY: How long have you been involved with THIMUN?
Loy: Since 1998, so this is year 26. This is my farewell tour.
MUNITY: What have been some of your favorite memories of THIMUN?
Loy: I think what I consider the favorite pieces are the relationships. People that stay in contact, that you see year after year, or students that will see a post that I’ll throw up on social media and will think “oh, those were great times”. And they’re much older now—around 20 years older—and well-established in their careers with their families, and this is still something that impacted their lives in a way that they remember it. That’s what it’s all about. It’s like an annual family reunion, I said to someone earlier.
MUNITY: How do you balance working at a school and THIMUN?
Loy: I try to turn off school when I’m at THIMUN, but I can’t. School doesn’t stop. So I’m on my laptop early in the morning, sitting for breakfast, answering emails after the function when I get back to my hotel room. I’m in the building by 7:30 and sometimes all the way until 10:30 depending on what’s happening in the rooms.
MUNITY: What are your post-THIMUN plans?
Loy: Well, Dutch law has made it so that I have to retire from the school I work at by the end of this school year, so that is a reason I’m also retiring from THIMUN. I will be relocating to the U.S. I would almost say “back to the U.S.,” but I haven’t lived there for over 35 years, so it’s going to be like moving into a new country, like all of you have done and like I did as an Expat student. So I have to figure out what it is like to move into the U.S. again. That’s just the plan and after that it is all just ideas, it could be anything.
MUNITY: Where about in the U.S.?
Loy: Colorado. It’s going to feel real different moving back.
MUNITY: So it’s THIMUN day three today; how are you feeling about this year’s conference?
Loy: I feel good about every conference. There is so much planning that goes into it. And then we turn it over to the students and let it run. Every year something is run as smooth as it can be, and other things run into challenges right off the bat. Challenges come up through the week, and that is how things work with 2700 people in a building talking about all these important issues. The planning can only do the skeletal part, but it is the students that make it happen. I’m very pleased with what I’ve seen, but there are always issues that come up that detract from the focus of what we’re trying to do. But that’s okay. You deal with those as well; it’s life.
MUNITY: How would you compare THIMUN from when you first started to now?
Loy: It’s evolved in some ways. The COVID years were a challenge. When we started online, it made it very difficult to train up people in leadership positions. Student officer roles were different during online conferences. The admin staff was miniscule during the COVID years because they were sitting in a small room with headphones in. Some of them were in Dublin, some of them were here in The Hague and they could manage multiple rooms but in very different ways. They did not need to count the votes; there was no setup for the rooms; passing of notes was not part of what they did. So their work became very different. Since there were so few of them, when we came back in person, it was all new. Also for the chairs, it was so new for many of them. So, it’s different now even then it was two or three years ago. Even more years ago, we had a whole other building where Europol is now, there was something called the Staadthalle there, where we had some large committees. When that got torn down, we lost all of that space so we ended up getting smaller. When we started the conference in Singapore and Doha, we used to have one in Montevideo; we no longer have that conference but we also have those other two regional conferences.
MUNITY: How was your experience during the conference and do you have any favorite memories from that time?
Loy: Well, some of the memories I had were just from trying to get the students interested in it. We had around eight admin staff in a room at school, and it became enjoyable because they had downtime and we were all together. But it wasn’t nearly the same experience. Not at all.
MUNITY: Did you do MUN in high school?
Loy: No I didn’t. I wish I had. But one of the board members, Eric Adler, was a THIMUN delegate in 1976, and we were high school classmates at the American International School in Vienna. The person who was the MUN director then was my Social Studies teacher.
MUNITY: What led you to take on this position?
Loy: My first year at the American School of The Hague, I wanted to jump into some different activities, and the person who was doing the admin staff was leaving that year, so I shadowed him at THIMUN. I thought it was fun and interesting and like the vibe of working with all these students. So I ended up taking that role 26 years ago. I also started organizing that year with our band director to take a music trip to Disneyland Paris for our music students. We still do that every year too. I like doing things like that: organizing events for the benefit of the students.
MUNITY: Have you always been the treasurer of THIMUN?
Loy: No, I haven’t. I took an opening for the treasurer position later. I don’t wear a badge of honor with it. We all look at the numbers in every board meeting. We look at the financials and see where the money is coming in from every meeting which happens every month.
MUNITY: Do you plan to stay involved in THIMUN after you leave or follow social media from afar?
Loy: From afar for sure. I have dual U.S. and Dutch nationality, so I can always come back and haunt the building. It might be fun, so we’ll see what the future holds.
MUNITY: When they created THIMUN in the other locations, did you play a large role in that?
Loy: No, in Singapore and Doha I was on the board and part of the discussions, but not so much the onsite visits because my work at the school did not allow me to easily get away for that length of time. So I focus mostly here.
MUNITY: Do you deal a lot with problem-solving with students or disciplinary actions?
Loy: My primary focus is the conference and the students. When we are here, we are all involved. The office staff, the board members—we’re all focused on the conference rather than our individual positions. The officership is incidental, at least for me. In the past, the money part that used to take up time was carrying the charity collections from committees to the bank. Now, the charity is what we sell at the merchandise stand. But I would make three trips to the bank with literally a rolling carry-on of coins and bills to donate to the charities.
MUNITY: It must be a lot to do so much for the largest conference in the world.
Loy: It’s enjoyable because it really benefits so many people.