It’s that time of year, the time when the BAA seeks out new blood and energy to fill upcoming Vacancies. This cycle we will be seeing many open spots on our board and that is where we need your help. Starting Sunday April 15th, we will open the floor for nominations of several key positions. You’ll have two weeks to get in your nominations during which you can nominate anyone to the below listed positions and they will be asked to either accept or deny said nomination. Following the nomination period, we will hold online elections for all dues paying members to vote in!

Here are some more details about what positions will be open and how you can be a part of the process:

Elections Timeline:

All times in EST

1. April 16th @ noon – Nominations Open
   • We will put out a news post and social media blast with a link to a nominations form (we like our google forms this year).
2. April 28th @ 7 pm – Nominations Close
   • Last call will be made and anyone nominated will be contacted to accept or decline.
3. May 1st @ noon  – Elections Begin
   • News post will go live with a link to cast your ballot.
   • Only dues paying members will get their votes counted.
   • Anyone nominated will be encouraged, though not required, to add in a short statement on their goals for their term.
4. May 5th @ 7 pm – Elections End
   • last call will be made for any stragglers to get their votes in.
5. May 6th – Election results posted!
   • Congratulate our new BAA Exec Board!

Eligible Persons:

1. Any CMU alumni who has graduated or will graduate by June 2017 is eligible to be nominated (Graduating Seniors, that means you too!)
2. Any person who has been elected to two previous terms on the BAA Executive Board is not eligible to accept a nomination.

Open Seats:

This year we have several open seats that need to be filled and a few positions up for re-election. Each elected position constitutes a 2 year term on the board which can be held for 2 consecutive terms (total 4 consecutive years) pending successful re-election.

•  Treasurer – This position is currently held by Daniel Becerra who will be stepping down. For the BAA, this person receives our monthly financial information and reports our standing to the membership. This role also has taken on organizing fundraising activities such as our annual Lead Truck Auction and keeps records of currently active members.
• Team Outreach – This position is currently held by Connor Hayes who will be stepping down. This person is for someone who will be connected to the current sweepstakes leadership and is willing to reach out to current organizations or potential new ones to provide guidance and connections to other alumni. This person has also played a great role in providing content for our regular publications.
• Webmaster – This position is held in a very limited capacity by Sam Swift. The BAA site is in need of some tender loving care and some repairs which I’m sure you’re all aware of. Please check out our website page for more info on how this site is organized and structured.
• Communications – This position is currently held by Aileen Dinin who is completing her first term. This position organizes our larger newsletters and publications which go out to all dues paying members (i.e. Raceday Preview, Season Kickoff, ect.).
• Reporting Lead – This position is currently held by Natalie McGuier who is completing her first term. This position organizes and compiles our weekly rolls reports and wrangles local Pittsburgh people every weekend of rolls.
• President – This position is currently held by Ben Matzke. This person coordinates and directs all BAA Activities and communicates on behalf of the BAA to Alumni Relations and the larger CMU community and networks.

Completing the first year of his term, our Vice President Jeremy Tuttle’s seat is currently not open for election.

Given the unique nature of our organization, there will be an open field that can be entered with a new chair position for something that you believe is lacking or deserves it’s own role.

We’ve already heard from some people who are interested in joining the board and we are excited to give them the opportunity.

Happy voting!

If you’re reading this, you must be very interested in Buggy. And if you are, you definitely want to be a BAA member this year.
Members get exclusive perks, most importantly access to the highly anticipated Raceday Preview, which has everything you need to know about the teams and races. And you get to know you are supporting all the events we hold and the other things the BAA does to help make Sweepstakes run smoothly.

CMU is trying something new this year where they are running a challenge for every network and providing a potential cash reward! The challenge revolves around graduates from any Undergrad program at CMU who have never donated before. The best part is, ANY amount counts (e.g. the low low price of a BAA membership) and while we hope you send it our way, it can go towards any organization or program you want! Here are some more details:

• Challenge will run between April 2 and Aprill 22
• We will be posting weekly updates throughout
• With 50 new people, we receive $500
• With 100 new people, we receive $1000

If you’ve never before been a member, this is the perfect time to become one! To become a member, all you have to do is donate $10 or more to the BAA.

Should we make either of our goals, the money from this challenge will go towards the improvement of the cmuTV Raceday broadcast and help cover the costs of the production when sponsorship coverage is insufficient.

See our current membership list below which will be periodically updated. To help speed up the process of getting you on our list, or if you don’t see yourself on there and you think you should be, send me an email at danbecerra[at]cmubuggy.org with the receipt.

Click here to view the list!

Cheers,
Dan

Classes have been on for a couple weeks now and the students have been treated to an incredibly warm January and February isn’t looking much worse. Given the extremely tame winter with little to no snowfall, this could be the first time in several years that rolls could get going properly before spring break. With all this practice, we could be looking at another competitive Raceday. Making predictions now might be a bit early, so we’ll hold off until the Raceday Preview. Remember you have to be a dues paying member to receive the annual publication and the earlier you do it, the more likely you are to get it in the first round.

Speaking of donations, we’re still running our donation challenge for a little Raceday bonus to the winning alumni team. Currently CIA is in the lead, but not by much, so there is still plenty of chances to get ahead before the challenge ends on the first day of spring rolls. So remember if you make a donation before the first weekend of rolls, let us know.

Last bit of news for today, we are looking to revamp our normal luncheon into more of an evening event and are currently looking at a couple options. BAA HQ has narrowed it down to a couple options and we would like feedback from the larger buggy community. Which would you prefer:

• Alumni wrap-up party after Saturday awards ceremony for all alumni to get together and share their favorite raceday moments.
• Friday alumni or senior Banquet with the sweepstakes staff and our Alumni Relations reps.

At either of these events, we plan to restart our biannual elections. More information on those later this season.

We would love to hear your feedback and we are looking forward to a long spring season!

While many of us would like to still be doing buggy, we are relegated to the sidelines just to watch and cheer our past teams on. That’s all about to change! Now’s your chance to compete again and cheer harder than ever before… with your money. Continue reading →

With not enough teams to meet quorum, buggy took a break for the long weekend of the midsemester. With nothing to report on, we’ve been looking for something to share with you guys. Given our current struggle with membership tracking, we know there are some of you that didn’t get our most recent publication. So, until we figure out our tracking issue, everyone who reads this can get their own copy. Just send an email to news@cmubuggy.org, no donation required. If you’re feeling generous however, we of course wouldn’t say no.

Enjoy!

In addition to this past weekend being Commencement weekend (CONGRATS GRADUATES!), alumni leaders from around the world met at CMU’s Pittsburgh campus for this year’s Volunteer Forum. There was a mix of local Chapter leaders as well as Interest group leaders who all got a chance to talk to each other exchanging ideas and experiences. We of course had our own contingent of attendees representing the BAA and learning about all the opportunities that are available to us and areas where we might be able to do a little better.

Here just a few of the takeaways that I got from the weekend:

• We have a big opportunity of pairing with local chapter events around the US and beyond. Not only do we have strong alumni clusters in several cities in the Nation, local leaders were seeking us out looking for an excuse to have a buggy themed/related event.
• There are many Freshman welcome events that happen around the globe and we have an opportunity to reach out to those incoming Freshmen over the summer and show them what buggy is. There is nothing definitive yet, but we will hopefully get some help sending buggies to these gatherings for the new students to look and feel, and maybe even ride.
• Aside from the chapter groups, we also have an opportunity to help more than CMU by joining forces with groups like 1000plus to give back and help our regions be a better place.
• While we have amassed a good amount of funds thanks to your contributions, CMU has opportunities for additional grants to help support specific initiatives. These could be something like sending someone or something to an event or a special project that our group might want to work on.

As one of the larger and more “loyal” alumni groups, CMU wants to help us in any way they can and for us to take advantage of that interest we are going to need some help and potentially some new positions.  Below are outlined several positions some new, some existing, in no particular order, a few of which may be combined based on interest, but ideally split to lessen time-involvement needs from individual persons.

• Greek/Independent Student Outreach (2 people): It’s high time that we add some new teams to the mix and we believe that the interest is there, but the knowledge isn’t. We would like to have someone to reach out to existing Greek and Independent organizations to help them start their own program or help educate them on what they have to gain.
• Regional Coordinator (1 person): With all the interest from chapter groups, it would make sense for us to have someone dedicated to finding local alumni in areas around the US and the globe to attend local events that are looking for some buggy representation. This position may also involve coordinating local leaders in dense buggy areas to take part in local chapter meetings.
• Website Curator/Head Mechanic (2-3 people): As we all know there are many things that this site does well, but there are also many things that haven’t been updated and several features that would really help make this site become what it should be. We need someone to head up that effort and pull in extra hands when needed. There has also been talk of a cmubuggy 2.0 site that has yet to make much progress.
• Auction/Fundraising Lead (1 person): Our biggest fundraising event is currently the Lead Truck Auction that happens over Carnival. We need someone to take the lead on that effort and look into possible other opportunities.
• Special Projects Lead (2 people): There are dozens of projects that we have talked about working on, but only a few that have actually gone anywhere. It would be great to have a couple people take point on these projects which may involve anything from finding vendors for new equipment, to writing special reports on the state of the sport.
• Rolls Reports Organizer (2 people): One of our longest standing contributions to the sport and one of the things that takes the most effort. We need someone to take point on getting notes and photos from weekend Rolls and getting the Reports out every week. There is a large contingent of local Pittsburgh alumni, some of whom already attend the practices regularly. There is no reason that one person needs to go out every morning and this job could easily be split up between several people such that no one person would need to attend more than a weekend of rolls each semester.
• Raceday Preview Lead (1 person): As probably the biggest reason to be a BAA member, the Raceday Preview goes out every year before Carnival and often spills out over a few dedicated people. Ideally we would have one person to take on the task of organizing the production of this yearly summary piece.
• Treasurer (1 person): A traditional role, but one that is no less needed. This role would be for someone to receive our monthly statement, and summarize it to the rest of the group telling us where our money is coming in and going out.
• President/Chairman (1 person): Another traditional role that is pretty handy. This person would keep up with all the leads and make sure things are on track and oversee the general direction of the group and fill any gaps as needed. This is also a role that would involve a lot of communication with Alumni Relations and coordinating raceday/ceilidh events.

The good news is that very few if any of these roles are location dependent. While it might certainly help to be in Pittsburgh for something like Rolls Reports or Student outreach, someone to coordinate note-takers and photographers would not need to be there, and students all have email and several means of contact for outreach.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, we would love to hear from you. Please feel free to post any questions or thoughts below or in the forum. So far the BAA has only been represented by a few teams and it’s time to broaden our inclusion. This is a great opportunity for new alums to get involved or stay involved and make a lasting change on our great sport. This is the best way to stay close to the action and up to date with all the insider knowledge.

Hey everybody,

It’s that joyous time of year when the Raceday Preview actually comes out for all of our dues paying members. Sadly we know of a few members who have paid dues but we unfortunately do not have their email to send the Raceday Preview to.

If you paid your dues, and didn’t receive your Preview, please email news@cmubuggy.org and we will get it to you as soon as possible!

If you haven’t paid dues, but would like one, please check out cmubuggy.org/join for ways that you can obtain said Preview and email us when you’re done.

Happy reading, and we look forward to seeing you all at the Design Competition in TWO DAYS!