Composites For Buggy – A Crash Course

Happy Thursday buggy fans!

We at the BAA Teams Committee are taking advantage of a weekend without rolls to run our first ever “Composites 101” course for current buggy students.

When? Saturday 9/28, 2-3pm
Where? Wean Hall, 4625

We’ll be covering topics such as:

  • What are the pros and cons of different carbon fiber weave types?
  • What are the best core material choices for a team on a budget?
  • What is the difference between a wet layup and resin infusion? Can I use the same materials? And what the heck is prepreg carbon fiber?
  • How do we validate composite parts in industry… and why does that not necessarily work for us in the buggy world?

This course is geared to be accessible to new teams and freshmen buggy mechanics– but there should be plenty of interesting info for more experienced buggy mechanics as well.

Alumni– no need to feel left out! If you’re interested in getting involved with the BAA Teams Committee, to help us expand our collection of open-source buggy resources, please email Diya (BAA Quartermaster / Teams Committee Lead) at diyanuxoll@cmubuggy.org.

2024 BAA Election Results

The polls are closed, and the results are in! Congratulations to our newly elected BAA Board Members for the 2024-2026 term:

  • Vice President: Rachael Schmitt
  • Secretary: Sydney Baker
  • Treasurer: Wade Gordon
  • Broadcast: Matt Gallabrese
  • Communications: Dave Singh
  • Quartermaster: Diya Nuxoll
  • Rolls Reporter: Dan Becerra

Additionally, per the process for a mid-term vacancy, Jeremy Tuttle was elected as BAA President for the remainder of the 2023-2025 term.

Congratulations again to those elected, and thank you to everyone who ran in the elections this year!

As a final update, the BAA board has voted to rename the Webmaster position to be the Information Services Manager (ISM), in order to better reflect how that role has evolved over time.

Voting Open for BAA Elections 2024-2026


Vote Now: https://cmubuggy.org/vote


Elections for the BAA board terms of 2024-2026 are now open! Voting is open to any current member of the BAA. All races require at least 25 votes. Voting is open until May 29.

Uncontested Races: (Candidate must have more votes in favor than opposed)

  • Vice President: Rachel Schmitt
  • Secretary: Sydney Baker
  • Treasurer: Wade Gordon
  • Broadcast: Matt Gallabrese
  • Quartermaster: Diya Nuxoll

Contested Races: (Uses ranked choice voting, candidate must win a majority of votes)

  • Communications/ Marketing
    • Emily Forney
    • Dave Singh
  • Rolls Reporter
    • Dan Becerra
    • Emily Forney
    • James Wong

Vote Now: https://cmubuggy.org/vote


BAA Election Nominations 2024

With the dust of Raceday finally settled, it’s that time of year again – BAA election season! For the next week, we will be looking for nominations of CMU buggy alumni to fill the following roles:

President
Vice President
Secretary
Treasurer
Communications
Quartermaster
Broadcast
Rolls Reporter

In addition, the appointed Events chair position is open for self-nominations.

The submission form can be found HERE. You can read more about the roles and the incumbents for positions up for re-election there, and nominate your friends. Nominees can be any graduated CMU alum who has not already served two terms in that position.

Nominations will be accepted through May 14th, after which nominees will have a week to accept and write their platforms.

Current BAA officers and chairs can be found here if you have any questions!

Raceday 2024 is in the Books!

That’s a wrap on Raceday 2024! We here at the BAA very much want to thank all of the students, staff, and alumni who came out (or joined on the livestream) to make this year an amazing success. If you were in town, we hope you got a chance to see not only the races, but also catch up with other Buggy fans at one of the many events around campus.

We’ve completed our initial work at putting the results into our history database, and you can browse all the rankings and other awards on our site now.

We’d still love to get photos or videos, if you have any, you can join our discord and see the instructions for how to upload the photos and get credit there.

Don’t Miss Your 2024 Raceday Preview!

Less than 1 week until raceday, which means that we at the BAA are busy preparing your Raceday Preview for RD 2024.

In order to make sure you recieve the 2024 Raceday Preview, as well as all other BAA communications in the leadup to raceday, we wanted to push a few gentle reminders:

  • Check to see if you’re on our member list.
  • If you have already renewed your membership but are not getting our BAA Membership newsletters (most recently, our Winter newsletter on Dec 27), it’s possible that we have an out-of-date email address on file. Please use our Membership Update Form to let us know, and we will get this corrected.
  • If you haven’t already re-upped your BAA membership for 2024– now is as good a time as any! If you are renewing within the couple of weeks before raceday, please also use our Membership Update Form to let us know, so that we can get you on our membership list ASAP.

Other things you can do to satisfy your Raceday prepper needs:

  • Sign up to volunteer. We could always use more help to make raceday successful.
  • Join our discord to talk about the race with your fellow fans. Alumni, students, and all other buggy fans are welcome!
  • Check out our Podcast. Season 5 of CTS has some amazing episodes covering topics from the new Sweepstakes advisor, to how the video broadcast got its start in the early 00s.

Call For Raceday 2024 Volunteers!


Can you feel the excitement? — we’re about a month out from raceday!

If you’re going to be in town, we could certainly use your help. Volunteers are essential to making raceday happen, wether it is helping to staff the BAA table, assist with timing, or working as commentators. If you’ll be around we need your help to make raceday a success!

You can sign up to help with timing or tableing at https://cmubuggy.org/volunteer.
For those that dare to be a commentator, you’ll want https://cmubuggy.org/broadcast-volunteer.

See you at Carnival!

BAA Raceday Shirt Sale!

Raceday is just around the corner, and what better way to show your Buggy pride than be being prepared with your very own raceday shirt?

We have a great new design this year to show your excitement for the sport we all love. Don’t be the only spectator on the course without one!

Get yours now at https://cmubuggy.org/merch. Sale closes March 16 to ensure we can ship the first week of April.

December Newsletter and Membership Contact Updates

Happy New Years Eve buggy fans!

We sent out our fall semester wrap-up news letter this past week to our RD24 and RD23 members. Please note that just because you received this newsletter doesn’t mean you have a membership for this upcoming raceday. There is no better time than the present to renew, and make sure you get our members-only newsletter and raceday preview leading up to Carnival!

If you believe you should have received this newsletter but didn’t, it’s possible that we have an out-of-date email address on your membership. Please use our new Membership Update Form to let us know!

You can also use this form to request a change in the name displayed on our public membership list, to let us know if you no longer want to receive BAA emails, and to notify us of new or renewed memberships (particularly if you are donating in the few weeks prior to raceday, to make sure there are no delays in getting on our list). For easy reference, this form will be linked on our Membership page.

BAA Newsletter Alumni Spotlight Nominations

As we are working to compile content for our December 2023 BAA membership newsletter, we’re hoping to do a brief spotlight on a few our of alumni.

Fill out this form to nominate an alumni for their ongoing involvement with buggy, their professional accomplishments, life milestones, interesting hobbies, or really anything that you think would be of interest to the BAA community! Nominations will close this Sunday, 12/10.