Hey there buggy fans! Spring semester has sprung and already first rolls have kicked off as you might’ve seen. There are a number of important things happening in the buggy and BAA world that we want to tell you about, so let’s dive right in!
We might’ve mentioned this at the start of the year, but the fall Chairman (Hunter) has now graduated and the then Assn’t Chair (Joyce) has taken over for the Spring. To fill her place, the first chairman’s meeting included a near unanimous approval of the new Assistant Chair, Willie from Pi Kappa Alpha. The interesting component here is that Willie requested to be allowed to push on Raceday. Under the expectation that additional past sweepstakes members will be on hand during the Races, Willie will remove himself from any judgments regarding the men’s races.
We’ve mentioned this before, but a reminder never hurts, this year we will have 3 officers ending their second 2 year term and a few others finishing up their first. After Raceday this year, we will be looking to elect new people to be our: Head Reporter, Communications Lead, and President. At this point, we have a solid team where each person only has a couple responsibilities throughout the year so if you have any interest in what we do behind the scenes, please feel free to reach out and we’d be happy to tell you more!
The BAA only exists thanks to our devoted membership and the few that are willing to put in a little extra for just a couple years, and thanks to these people, our impact has made huge differences in the sport that we all love!
That’s right, if you’re headed back for Carnival this year, you can now register HERE. We’ve got another slate of great events for you this year as well as a few surprises in the works for #99! Here are a few highlights for you to whet your appetite:
That’s all for now, more great info to come soon!
As many of you have likely seen, the Mechanical Engineering department has a new makerspace/machine shop “TechSpark” which has brought some conversations and scrutiny on existing student shops. There has been a letter circulating which includes some very frightening language claiming that they aim to shut down and remove all student equipment, stifling innovation, and potentially killing the sport as we know it. Until recently, this is all the information we’ve had to go on as CMU hasn’t put out a statement on the topic. To that end, I would like to take some time to talk about what is going on, what we know currently, and where this is headed. I had a chance to talk with Kaycee, who, on top of being the sweepstakes adviser, also helps run the student shop registration process which has been in affect for the past 3-4 years.
*Disclaimer, this is not an official statement by CMU, this is purely my take-aways from my conversation, which I would love to discuss in more depth with those that are interested.
*EDIT- I was informed of some misunderstandings and have made corrections below. Continue reading
Thanks to the 15 of you who took the time to express your opinion, the results are unanimous! Please help me to welcome the new BAA officers for the Raceday 2019 season –
I couldn’t be happier to add these names to our outstanding roster of officers, and we’ve got a number of exciting meetings already in the works for the summer. Thank you for being involved Alumni volunteers and BAA members, we would not be able to do the things we do without your time and support!
Hey YOU, have you voted for our new officers yet? No? GO DO IT NOW! https://goo.gl/forms/MLD5Y2g5LURpZ1IZ2. We’ll be closing the ballots THIS SUNDAY (June 24th), so join us as part of the BAA and have your voice heard!
Already voted? Then check out the 2018 Finals races and Exhibitions now uploaded to our Youtube, Thanks again to Connor Hayes for putting in the effort to chop up the stream into each race and of course cmuTV for their continued effort and fantastic production work.
Thanks to everyone that submitted nominations for our open positions this year. We have a great list of nominees for each position. All nominees have been contacted, all are excited to join the team, and we are excited to work with them!
Only one step remains, it’s time for each of you to have your voice heard and vote in our new officers. Either follow the link here, or fill out the below ballot to submit your vote! https://goo.gl/forms/MLD5Y2g5LURpZ1IZ2
Thank you for being involved in this process and we can’t wait to get started planning for the 99th year of BUGGY!
Only a few days left to nominate yourself or your favorite buggy fanatic to be a part of the BAA! https://goo.gl/forms/gzSbl4bomNfebFyy2 Continue reading
Quick Plug: If you know a buggy fanatic who needs an outlet, send ’em our way and we’ll make them feel at home: https://goo.gl/forms/gzSbl4bomNfebFyy2 Nominations will be open until June 8th! Continue reading
Now that we’ve finally been able to recover from Raceday, we here at BAA HQ have had a chance to look back on the year and make some notes for next year, but we would also love to hear your thoughts on the year, and ways we can continue to improve this sport we all love and devote our time and energy to.
First of all, CONGRATS TO ALL GRADUATES, and welcome to the CMU and Buggy Alumni family! As a special offer, all 2018 graduates are offered their first year membership for free! All you have to do is tell us who you are via this link!
Second up, it’s time for the 2018 BAA Elections. We currently only have one position up for re-election, but we are also looking to fill in some additional positions to align with our bylaws as well as a couple new positions we think would help us further the mission of the BAA. Here are a few more details
You can of course also nominate for any of the other, currently filled, positions if you would like. For reference, here are the current officers:
President – Ben Matzke (Middle of second term)
Vice President – Jeremy Tuttle (End of first term)
Communications – Aileen Dinin (Middle of second term)
Reporting – Natalie McGuier (Middle of second term)
Treasurer – Bryan Arsham (Middle of first term)
Webmaster – Krishan Taylor (Middle of first term)
Lastly, since the summer has officially kicked off, the conversation has been getting going on our Discord chat, the same one we use during raceday! Feel free to jump and share your thoughts. We’ve got some discussions going around cutting up and uploading all of the missing footage from past racedays, and also updating and fleshing out our history database with awards and winners from recent and past years.
