Students from 12 D.C.-area middle schools learned about international affairs at the fourth annual Greater Washington Conference on International Affairs Saturday.

About 170 eighth-grade students from schools in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. gathered in the Marvin Center Ballroom at 9 a.m. for opening ceremonies. Keynote speaker Lary MacDonald of the Mid-Atlantic Region Japan-in-the-Schools addressed the group about global thinking.

You don’t have to be a politician to have an international vision, he said.

The students were divided into various committees in an effort to simulate the organization of the United Nations.

Some of the seven committees were crisis committees, while others represented international groups such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the International Court of Justice, said junior Kristen-Marie Kaczynski, who co-headed the event with senior Mike Hankey. Both are members of the GW International Affairs Society, which hosted the event.

Each committee held two sessions in which students representing different countries were given the opportunity to speak and advance the position of their designated country. The students prepared for the conference by researching the political actions of their countries in the real world, Kaczynski said.

We want them to think outside the box, but we want them to think as realistically as possible, she said. We tried to give them a lot of freedom to think on their own.

Kaczynski said if the action of a particular committee was lagging, conference volunteers could inflict a crisis in a committee room. This could include a military attack or assassination.

Kaczynski said a great deal of work went into making the event run smoothly.

Our staff is so dedicated, she said. Even the people who didn’t see it through until today gave at least 25 hours. I just feel everybody gave so much.

The middle-school students involved in the conference said they saw it as a learning experience about global affairs. Sanna Shah, who attends the Holton-Arms school in Maryland, said she came to GWCIA just to know more about international affairs.

It forces us to be aware of our surroundings, she said.

Kaczynski said the middle-school students were not the only ones who benefited from the conference.

The coolest thing about this conference is students helping students, she said. As Generation X, society has such a low opinion of us. It was great to introduce them to something that they wouldn’t normally be introduced to.