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Committee Summary
Take a stroll down Sesame Street into Mister Rodger’s Neighborhood and then take a stay at Downton Abbey for the night. Whether it be a band of muppets teaching you math, a British drama set after the sinking of the Titanic or an informative documentary about the American Revolution, PBS has always sought to blend education with entertainment. Regardless of what your personal media interests are, PBS has intersected with every American’s life in one way or another.
The PBS Board of Directors will be in charge of overseeing all operations of PBS at large.
With the rise of generative AI, government funding being cut and the normal struggles that come with running an entertainment company, this Board of Directors has their work cut out for them. Balancing education and entertainment has always been the forefront goal of PBS and delegates must prioritize finding new content and new ways to attract the shortening attention span of America’s youth. Delegates must come together to be able to maintain and preserve the 56-year-old American tradition that is PBS before it falls victim to the never-ending media stream of the modern day era.
MEET THE CHAIR
PAIGE KIM
Dear Delegates,
My name is Paige Kim and I have the honor and privilege of being the Chair for the Public Broadcasting System: Board of Directors. I am a fourth year student majoring in English hoping to get into the creative writing field. I am proudly from Southern Californian and this will be my eighth year in MUN as well as my sixth BruinMUN. Needless to say, the conference has a special place in my heart and has been one of the beautifully consistent things I have looked forward to every fall for the past couple of years. Outside of MUN, you can find me playing a Roblox tycoon, logging movies on my Letterboxd, napping, locking in over a coffee or spending my savings on vinyls.
My journey in MUN started in high school when I joined my program because I enjoyed arguing. However, what I got out of the program was more than just an opportunity to argue, but an amazing community filled with some of the best people. I joined MUN at UCLA my freshman year and was embraced just as equally, bonding and making some of my closest friends in college. One thing about MUN is that you can always count on the stress of it to bring you close to whoever you’re doing it with. The community has been the best thing I have gotten out of it and it is something I am grateful to be surrounded by every day.
As a kid I grew up on PBS. I started my journey being afraid of Sesame Street, but grew to love shows like Peg + Cat as I grew older. The Falsettos Pro-Shot done by PBS was important to a theater kid like me in middle school and helped show me early on what accessibility to the arts can do for a person. If it was not for access to that production I would not have found my passion for theater and the arts that I do now. In a time of funding cuts to the arts, it is now more important than ever to have a committee that spotlights problem-solving in the face of this modern epidemic. Delegates must come together to be able to advocate and make art accessible and available for everybody. I am more excited than ever to see what you all come up with.
Please let me know if you have any questions at all and I will be more than happy to answer them!
Good luck,
Paige Kim | Chair, PBS: BoD | BruinMUN 34
MEET THE CRISIS DIRECTOR
MATT LEE
Dear Delegates,
My name is Matt, and it is my pleasure to serve as your Crisis Director for BruinMun 34!
I’m a current fourth year Theater major here at UCLA, with a concentration in design and production, with a minor in Labor Studies. I’m predominantly a Costume Designer, but also dabble in Sound, Lighting and other technical elements of theater! For me I’ve always had a passion for sewing as well as drawing, so when I discovered costume design my junior year of high school I felt like I fit right in. As an artist and scholar, I’m interested in the intersection of art and politics, and how entertainment informs the way we carry ourselves in the world. With my minor in Labor Studies I’m specifically interested in understanding labor law and the process of unionization, especially in marginalized and immigrant communities.
As someone who started their MUN journey in college, I knew nothing about the circuit or the culture, in full honesty I joined because my friend pitched it to me as political improv, so I said yes. However after getting to know people and staffing more conferences, I’ve learned there's so many facets and passionate people who care a lot about the way policy impacts us all. What I love about Model UN is the political theater of it all and how giving speeches is really a performance of self, and how inherently collaborative committee is, encouraging people of all different perspectives to work together. I enjoy how theatricality and creativity is rewarded, both as a delegate and as a crisis director.
Outside of MUN I'm a huge theater fan (ask me about Cabaret, Spring Awakening, or Falsettos), I love thrifting, painting, and DJ’ing the occasional event. I’m a big Community fan (cool cool cool) as well as a Björk truther.
As one of many kids who didn’t have cable TV growing up, PBS, and more specifically KBPS hold special memories for me (#teamwildkratts), and to see the defunding of public networks like PBS as well as the decline in funding for the arts in general is disheartening. Media and culture have such profound impacts on shaping who we are as people, and to defund the telling of unique, informative and accessible stories is to invisiblize these important communities and ideas in the real world. The world of PBS is vast and means a lot to many different people, and I hope through this committee we can come together and save the Public Broadcasting Service!
Best,
Matt Lee | Crisis Director, PBS: BoD | BruinMUN 34