Late Saturday night, hundreds of college students were awakened by phone calls informing them that a coup had occurred in the Dominican Republic.

On any other weekend, this would have been considered a prank call, but on Saturday, it was treated as a crisis.

The rudely-awakened students were delegates to the 44th session of the Harvard National Model United Nations (HNMUN), a 1,900-member conference held in Boston's Park Plaza Hotel, which was staffed by Harvard students.

The event, which took nearly a year to plan, drew students from colleges and universities around the world for simulations of various United Nations committees, which dealt with everything from crafting legislation to handling crises such as the Dominican coup.

Press and publicity liaison Elizabeth S. Nowlis '01 said the conference emphasized the need for open and cooperative discussion among all nations in order to resolve today's complicated world issues."

"It's about the spirit of cooperation and promoting anti-violence solutions," she said. "People learn a lot from the process that can be applied to real-world issues."

"Even though the formal rules to the forum at first seem too detailed, when you put them all together, they construct a powerful negotiations system," Nowlis said.

Students attending the conference played delegates from more than 185 countries, and each country was represented in committee by one or two delegates from each nation.

The conference simulated only certain parts of the United Nations, with six General Assembly committees, seven economic and social committees and eight specialized agencies, including the Security Council, NATO and the International Court of Justice.

Each committee came to the conference with its own agenda. President of the Security Council Guha V. Bala '98 said his committee was most concerned with certain current events.

"Our main goal was to come up with new methods of enforcement that would lead to peaceful solutions," he said. "We discussed the present situation in Iraq and made Iraq one of our late-night crises."

This year's keynote speaker was David Peleg, Israeli deputy ambassador to the United Nations.

HNMUN Secretary-General Scott M. Singer '98 said his organization, which held its first conference in 1921 and is thus the oldest collegiate model United Nations, hopes to attract over 2,000 delegates next year.

Student delegates who attended the weekend conference said they learned a lot from discussing and examining current issues and events.

"It simulates the ideas and the issues that we are facing in the world, and it provides a distinct connection between our normal lives and global issues," said Tom W. Oakley, a sophomore from the United States Military Academy representing Russia.

Larry C. Ellis, a sophomore at York University in Toronto, said the conference helped him build leadership skills.

"You have kids in school and you bring them here to instill a growth in their minds," said Ellis, who represented Turkey at the conference. "Not only is it good for today's problem-solving, but [it is also good] for enhancing the minds of our future leaders."