BAA Membership Roster

The preview is getting it’s final polish and we’re about ready to send it out, BUT before we do, here’s your chance to check and make sure that you’ve made your donation to the BAA and should be expecting the preview in the first round of distributions. We’re working on fixing up the site and the roster section is on the list, but for now use the link below.

CHECK YOUR STATUS HERE

If you’re not on the list and want think you should be, or want to fix your mistake of not donating, send your receipt email from CMU showing your donation and designation to join@cmubuggy.org and we’ll get you added. After you’ve got your membership sorted out, take a gander at this year’s auction where we’ve nearly passed the 50% mark with more than a day remaining!

Compubookie 2018

It seems that the mystery writer has given up completely on trying to publish through the tartan’s traditional media and is instead relying on us as the modern media outlet of choice. It’s a bit jarring in our eyes given the outdated mindset of this year’s opinion piece, but we’ll let you be judge of that.

Disclaimer: Any comments made are those solely of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of the BAA.

It’s that time of year again, and with only a few days of spring rolls, I expect some carnage in the chute this year. SAE and PiKA have drivers that barely qualified, Spirit will definitely crash, Phi Delt probably will be too slow to make it past the monument, but who else will bring us excitement?

SDC brings back the winningest driver in history, the winningest buggy in history, and experienced push teams looking to set more records. They’re pretty much unbeatable so the other orgs have to hope for a colossal failure. This almost happened last year, as the nose of their A Team buggy was over the start line at the beginning of the men’s race. Fortunately for everyone, the head judge (a former SDC chair) was completely objective and did not call a DQ. Inferno did crash the Saturday of truck weekend bringing some hope to the other orgs, but it’s rolling normally again and looks to be fine for raceday.

PiKA was back in a big way last year with men’s A finishing 2nd, men’s B going down to the wire with CIA A, and women’s A taking home third. This just goes to prove how good the fraternity teams can be if they were also allowed to recruit any talent on campus, regardless of if they are a brother or not. Since raceday however, we’ve seen the Pike that we’ve been used to seeing: not being able to make it to rolls on time, not being able to qualify one of their buggies, not being able to be functional members of society, etc. Can they continue their success from last year, or with a push team of actual brothers will they not be able to compete?

SigEp has been rolling 4 buggies as of late and are showing promise after a strong 2017 showing. Barracuda is somehow still rolling well, they fixed the buggy that broke during the 2016 race, and still have the atrocity called Beyonce. Hopefully the brothers this year are able to pass drops and have clean runs both days. On the bright side, unlike in Greek Sing, there isn’t a philanthropy competition for them to lose.

As per usual, CIA has been rolling well and we could see big things on race day, maybe even bigger than their wheels. Unless they’re paired up with the PiKA B team, that is. From the looks of it, their push team isn’t any better than last year, and while their line is clean, it won’t help if they can’t get up and over Hill 1 before the other team in their heat. For a while, CIA seemed like the only team who could compete with SDC, but now it’ll just be a surprise if CIA can compete.

Spirit and Fringe continue to put out disappointing performances on raceday. Spirit could have the fastest downhill on the course, but only if they don’t crash on the curb before getting there. They lose time in the chute and their push team just isn’t enough to get them to the top of the leaderboard. Fringe had a men’s 6th place trophy last year until SDC demanded a re-time for their B Team and snuck in front of Fringe a whole week after the race. Come on, who does that over a B Team in 6th place? Fringe has a fast push team and impressive had an impressive spring, they could cause teams problems on race day.

 

Predictions

Men’s Division:

1. SDC A

2. SigEp A

3. SDC B

4. PiKA A

5. Spirit A

6. Fringe A

7. CIA A

8. Spirit B

9. SigEp B

10. SDC C

 

Women’s Division:

1. SDC A

2. PiKA A

3. SDC B

4. CIA A

5. Fringe A

6. Spirit A

7. Sig Ep A

8. CIA B

9. Spirit B

10. Apex A

 

The Field

Apex: The only contribution you gave to buggy this year is a safety chair

CIA: Completely Irrelevant Again

Fringe: Bissa, Bolt, Blueshift, B teams, Beating you

Phi Delt: You have more drivers than people who go to rolls

PiKA: I feel bad writing this, open letters haven’t been great for you this year

Robobuggy: AI solidarity

SAE: Your new buggy takes you from the worst buggy on the course to maybe third worst

SDC: Let’s make our ex-chair head judge, then we’ll never be DQ’d

SigEp: Sweepstakes made a new category in design comp so you could win something, cute!

Sig Nu: DNQ. Tragic.

Spirit: Another year in which you won’t come close to winning! NFJ!”