PITTSBURGH, PA – After a contentious, four-hour long debate at a Chairman’s meeting today, Sweepstakes Chair Ale Bonacini announced that “Raceday 2024” has officially been renamed to “Buggy Day 2024”. Raceday, the traditional name used to describe Carnegie Mellon’s Sweepstakes race held during CMU’s Spring Carnival festivities, had been in use since by students, staff, and alumni for several generations, with its first reported use in writing going back to 1965. Planning was well underway with the “Raceday 2024” branding for the upcoming April 12-13 event. But after a tense meeting and a 7-6 tiebreaking vote, the Chairpeople decided to buck that trend and set out on a new course.
The motion to rename the races to “Buggy Day” was initiated by Fringe. “We believe that Buggy would be better off by branding the bout between bitter rivals with the best alphabetical beginning, best it be bestowed the byname Buggy Day”, said Fringe Chair Winona Wang. The motion was quickly seconded by SigNu, whose representative stated that “our alumni have been way too involved, telling us about how much better things were in the old days. We need some independence, and what better way to do that then to wipe the slate clean and rebrand the race?” SigNu’s rep wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal by their vengeful alumni.
The discussion then turned a little more heated, as PiKA and SDC voiced their objections to the proposal. SDC Chair Matthew Garcia made a point that seemed to resonate with several teams, stating that “we already ordered our shirts that say ‘Raceday 2024’ and there’s not enough time to get a new design printed and shipped!” “We’ve been racing since 1921, and we’ve been calling it Raceday since 1921” said PiKA Chair Christian Lanuza. “It’s Raceday. That’s what it is. ‘Buggy Day’ sounds like something that a person who was attending their first Chairmen’s meeting ever would say!”
Teams seemed to fall into one of two camps, with newer teams favoring the name change and more established teams favoring tradition. As AEPi Chair Elijah Cohen put it, “the only reason we stopped doing Buggy was due to confusion – our brothers thought ‘Raceday’ was referring to the Mobot races, so we’ve been dominating that for several years. With the name ‘Buggy Day’, we’ll be back to racing buggies!”
After several hours of debate, Sweepstakes officially took a vote, with Fringe, SigNu, AEPi, Apex, and DG supporting the name change and Spirit, CIA, SigEp, PiKA, and SDC opposing. Teams spent another hour lobbying the remaining teams, and each side believed that they had crafted a convincing argument. When the votes were tallied however, more chaos ensued. The Spirit-led group pushing to keep the name Raceday had convinced SAE to side with them, but the Fringe-backed group pushing for the name “Buggy Day” had convinced newcomer Frontier. This left the vote deadlocked at 6, at which point Sweepstakes no choice but to leave the decision up to Sweepstakes Advisor Stacie Gardner, who ultimately decided to approve the name change. With her decisive vote, Stacie stated that “for years, people have been mocked, ridiculed, and slandered for mis-stating the name of the day when buggies race around CMU’s campus. Today, we put an end to buggy bullying. From now on, the day that buggies race will be known by the name that everyone expects it to be called – ‘Buggy Day’.”
The name change is set to go into effect today, April 1, 2024. Sweepstakes has already announced, however, that they are looking into voting irregularities involving SAE and Frontier, so stay tuned. Regardless, we at the BAA are here to keep you up to date on both this year’s Buggy Day activities and historical Buggy Day Results.
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