A chair runs a committee. The chair decides who speaks, keeps the debate inside the Rules of Procedure, and makes sure every delegate in the room gets a fair chance to be heard.
A chair is a Student Officer. That means a student who runs part of the conference, rather than a student taking part in it.
A chair is not a delegate with extra powers. A chair does not represent a country, does not hold a policy, and does not take a side in the debate. See Chair neutrality.
Most of a chair's work happens before anyone arrives.
Learn the Rules of Procedure. The house will ask you questions and expect answers. See
Write the research report for your committee's topics. One report is written for each topic.
It is reviewed by the secretariat and then published to the delegates.
Read and mark position papers. Chairs review position papers and give the delegate feedback on
them.
Agree an approach with your co-chairs. Delegates should not get different answers to the same
question from different chairs.
In MEDIMUN, research reports, position papers and feedback are all handled in MediBook. See Chair research reports and Chair position paper review.
Take the roll call at the start of every day and again after breaks. This sets who is present
and who may vote. See Roll call.
Run lobbying. Read every draft in circulation, answer questions, mediate between groups that
cannot agree, and check for plagiarism early. Make sure one loud delegate does not take over a group. See Running lobbying.
Check resolutions. The chairs are the first check on a resolution before it goes to the
Approval Panel. See The Approval Panel for delegates.
Run debate. Set reading time and debate time, recognise speakers, answer points, rule on
motions, decide which amendments are debated, and run the vote.
Keep the record. Who spoke, who yielded to whom, which amendments passed, and how each vote
went.
A committee has more than one chair, and they divide the work.
One chair runs the debate. They answer points, recognise speakers, time speeches and count votes.
One chair handles logistics. They keep the records, reply to messages sent to the chairs, and track
who has spoken.
One chair handles amendments. They read every amendment, judge which ones are worth debating, and
keep the resolution text up to date as amendments pass.
Only one chair speaks to the house at a time. See The chairing team.
If you are swapping chairing duties. Do it only at clear points. A resolution should be chaired from start to finish by the same person. Handing over halfway through is how a committee loses track of where it is in the debate.
Chairs never contradict each other in front of the house. If two chairs disagree, they settle it between themselves and one of them then speaks.
Chairs come from the schools taking part in the conference.
In MEDIMUN, chairing is the one role on the organising team open to students from any participating school. About half of the chairs come from schools other than The English School. At least one chair in every committee is from The English School.
Chairing carries responsibility for a room of people, most of whom are younger than eighteen. There are rules about how a chair behaves, how a chair contacts delegates, and what a chair may and may not do with committee documents.
In MEDIMUN, those rules are binding and are set out in the Chair Rules section of this library. Start at Chair rules overview. They are written for chairs and are only visible to chairs and to management.
If you are unsure of a rule during debate. Ask the house to wait. Check with your co-chair. Look it up. If you still do not know, tell the house you will find out and come back to them. Then ask the secretariat. Guessing in front of the house is worse than pausing.