Please complete this form if you would like to nominate someone for a board position. In particular, we are looking for more nominations for Vice President and Secretary. Nominations close tomorrow evening.

This year we are holding regular elections for President, Secretary, Graphics Chair, and Information Services Manager. Additionally, we are holding a special election to fill a vacancy for Vice President. BAA election procedures are outlined in the Bylaws and Constitution.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Pittsburgh weather didn’t play kindly this year. Due to rain, most of the 2025 races were not able to be held on Carnival weekend, and for the first time since 1981, we had a “Bonus” Raceday the following weekend. Most of you reading this probably weren’t able to get to Pittsburgh to watch it though, so all you’ve seen of the Men’s and Women’s races were the results themselves, and maybe a little bit of video (along with audio) from the live stream.

Until now.

What you may not have realized is that while we weren’t live streaming it, we had 12 different cameras, plus a drone, filming the races from every angle. And now that we’ve had a chance to put it all together, we’ve released it into the world. All Raceday 2025 heats, including the 29 Heats from Bonus Raceday Saturday and Sunday, are now available on the cmubuggy YouTube channel. Go and watch (or rewatch) as the current students persevered and put together a tremendous 2 extra days of racing, featuring all of the excitement, including a couple of new angles that we haven’t really had before – and for the first time ever, in 4K!

Oh, and don’t stop there – the All Gender and Exhibition heats from Friday are up as well, along with the bonus awards ceremony for the Men’s and Women’s races.

And remember, if you’re a graduating senior, you can sign up to become a member of the BAA for free here.

HUGE shoutout to all of the students, faculty, alumni, and others who volunteered to help out and make Bonus Raceday a massive success. But in particular, a special shoutout to Tom Felmley, David Yang, Shannon Lee, Onyx Mayer, Nate Miller, Chloe Lin, Logan Watanabe, Aarya Batchu, Dillon Lareau, Chris Goode, Wade Gordon, Matt Gallabrese, Clarise Liu, and Raghu Venkatesh for operating the cameras over the weekend, Cassidy and the WRCT team for handling the audio on the course, and Sophie Halpern, Connor Hayes, Nate Klein, and Will Weiner for coming out to do the commentary and providing us with the only real eyes or ears that we had on the buggies in real time.

This year we are holding regular elections for President, Secretary, Graphics Chair, and Information Services Manager. Additionally, we are holding a special election to fill a vacancy for Vice President.

Please nominate any graduated CMU alumnus who has not already served 2 terms in the position. In particular, we are looking for nominations for Vice President and Secretary.

Nominees will have until May 22nd to accept either by completing this form with a self nomination, or by contacting a member of the election administrators. This years election administrators are Wade Gordon and Matt Gallabrese and can be contacted through the BAA Discord. Nominees are invited to contact the current election administrators and current board members if they have questions about the duties of a position.

The BAA board holds monthly meetings throughout the year, with increased frequency around Carnival. As an officer, attendance is not mandatory at every meeting so long as you continue to make an effort to support the mission and projects of the BAA and ensure that the duties of your position are fulfilled.

BAA election procedures are outlined in the Bylaws and Constitution.

At the most recent Chairmen’s meeting, next year’s Sweepstakes committee was elected. Congratulations to the new committee!

Chair: Rebecca Dettmar (Fringe)
Ass. Chair: Jasmine Zeng (Spirit)
Safety Chair: Julia “Jazz” Liu (CIA)

The chairmen also voted on a number of rules changes, pending advisor approval. Some of them are simple improvements to wording, or updates to bring the rules up-to-date with current practices. Others are bigger changes to driver qualification requirements and disqualification penalties. We will post the fully updated rules document on our website as soon as it is available. For now, here’s a changelog for your perusal.

Rule Changes

Capes and Rolls

• Capes location clarified
• Robotic buggies added to language for capes and drops
• Drops location formalized as being on the road, rather than the sidewalk, in line with current practice
• New driver follow car observation ride requirement elaborated
• Fall carryover rolls increased slightly for drivers with a large number of fall rolls
• Veteran drivers may now complete their pass test for the year in the fall, after completing 8 rolls
• Drivers must now complete their spring rolls requirements across a minimum of two days, one of which must not be during truck weekend

Sweepstakes

• Added several appointed Sweepstakes roles to spread the workload— Finance, Assistant Safety, and Mechanical Safety
• Operations Chair added as an elected role
• MarComm renamed to Events & Broadcast Chair

Raceday

• Start line is now described in reference to buildings other than the late Skibo Gym
• King/Queen/Monarch of the Hill methodology and criteria formalized
• Number of teams in women’s finals increased to 10 to match current practice
• Reroll requirements updated to reflect current practices, specifically allowing rerolls when a driver stops due to a valid safety concern

DQs

The following infractions are now enforced with 6-second time penalties, rather than DQs:

• 5-second violations, where the buggy is at the line at the count of “5,” and any offenders are gone by “Ready”
• Lane violations of one full wheel, but not the full buggy
• False starts not deemed intentional or excessive (time penalty is 6 seconds, plus the amount of time early that the buggy started). Other entries in the heat may get a reroll.
• Transition violations of one foot but not both feet
• Pacing violations

Any other violations, including interference arising from any of the above violations, are still DQs, and many have been reworded to indicate this. In addition:

• Three time penalties on an entry in a heat result in a DQ.
• Time penalties are counted in finals seeding, but not future year seeding.
• Time penalties do not carry forward. They only affect the result of the heat in which they’re incurred.

At long last, we have finished the 2025 races! While they were a week late and far from ordinary, the men’s and women’s races were a unique and special occasion. Congratulations to all the teams for simply making it this far and making it around the course, and of course, congratulations to this year’s victors, CIA and SDC.

I would like to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to all the BAA members, CMU staff, students, and other friends and alumni who came together at the last minute to make this production possible. With less than a week’s notice, at least fifty-five different volunteers signed up, showed up, stepped up to make these races happen. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it. Really and truly, thank you all.

If you’ve been following along, you saw and heard our makeshift broadcast over the weekend. What you may not know is that we had over a dozen video cameras recording around the course for the entirety of this weekend’s races. Over the coming months, we will be editing this footage into full coverage of every heat that was run. If you are interested in helping with this sizeable project, please reach out to a BAA Officer.

Early next month, look out for news about BAA elections. But for now, most of us need a post-raceday nap. Once again, thank you all for your continued support.

Due to the anticipated inclement weather, the decision has been made that we will not proceed with Sunday races.

As you all know, this does unfortunately mean that the Men’s and Women’s heats will not be racing this weekend. Instead, these heats will be scheduled to race next weekend (4/12 and 4/13) during the usual rolls timeslot (prior to 9 AM). Due to time constraints, the heat schedule and race format may be modified, with details forthcoming.

We know that this is extremely frustrating for everyone, but we’d like to remind everyone that it’s times like these where the community aspect of Buggy is most important. We’d like to commend the students for their composure and poise through these unprecedented times, and we encourage everyone to do the same.

With Men’s and Women’s heats scheduled for next week, we are also in dire need of volunteers to help make Bonus Raceday 2025 happen! If you plan to be in the Pittsburgh area next weekend, please take the time to give us a hand—although it sounds cheesy, it’s the truth that we will not be able to run the rest of these heats without help from you all.

A huge thank-you for all the alumni, students, and buggy fans who turned out this weekend! Although this was not the Raceday we would’ve liked to share with everyone, we look forward to seeing the rest of those exciting races next weekend!

Due to the continuing rain, races have been cancelled for today, Saturday, April 5.

Expect a further update this afternoon about when races will next be scheduled.

Hi Buggy Fans — due to the amount of rain expected this weekend, there are adjustments to the expected schedule. Here they are as we know them at the current time (approximately midnight before the races).

Please Note: The following times are the earliest possible and subject to change due to course conditions or other factors:

• First roll of the day will be vintage buggy exhibition at 9:45.
• Timing heat 10 AM
• All Gender races to begin after that.
• Exhibitions to follow as long as time permits.

There will be no Mens or Womens Prelim Races on Friday.

The Lead Truck Auction ends tonight at 9PM. Get your bids in early and witness buggy history in the making from the best seat¹ on the course!

https://cmubuggy.org/auction

1. and the only seat that won’t get you chased off by the course marshals ↩︎