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:
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getting our BAA Membership newsletters (most recently, our Winter newsletter on Dec 27), it’s possible that we have an out-of-date email address on file.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:
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.
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.
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!
Spring Freerolls are starting up again. Here’s the best ways you can stay informed about what is happening:
Join us on our discord and you’ll see a few real time photos, as well as occasional discussion.
We expect to continue to post rolls reorts, either join our Discord to get notified by chat, or subscribe to baa-news to get them in your inbox.
If you’re in Pittsburgh, 2 more things just for you:
The buggy-watchers list is the best way to find out about times and cancellations, so you can attend to watch in person.
If you’re there, we’d love to hear your notes and observations, as well as share any photos you take. Doesn’t need to be super detailed — every little bit helps! Details at https://cmubuggy.org/rollsreporters.
Finally, we’d love to have a dedicated rolls reporter coordinator. You do not need to be local to do this! If you’re interested in helping compile notes and photos, get in touch on discord!
Tonight is your last chance to get your application in for a Spring 2024 Buggy Enhancement Grant! I will be online tonight if anyone has any last minute questions or issues getting their application in. As always, the easiest way to get in touch with any BAA Officer is through our Discord.
For more information about Buggy Enhancment Grants, including tips from the committee on how to strengthen your grant proposal, the actual text of previously approved grant applications, how to access shared resources funded by this program, and how you can support this program, please read All About Buggy Enhancement Grants!
The first committee review is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 5. Applicants should expect to receive the initial questions and feedback from the committee by Monday evening. Please respond to the committee’s questions by Sunday evening, Feb 11, at the latest. We expect the final review to be scheduled for Monday, Feb 12, with the final funding decisions to be sent out that evening.
There are 10 days left to apply for a Buggy Enhancement Grant for Spring 2024! Applications are open until the end of January. Don’t wait, get your application in today!
If you are looking for inspiration, for your grant proposal, you can view previously approved grant applications here. For your one stop shop to learn everything there is to know about Buggy Enhancement Grants including tips from the committee on how to strengthen your grant proposal, please read All About Buggy Enhancement Grants!
Applications for our Spring 2024 Buggy Enhancement Grant campaign are now open! If you consider yourself a member of the Buggy Community, and you have ideas that could enhance your Buggy experience, please apply!
Submissions are due by the end of January, and will be reviewed by the Buggy Endowed Fund Committee in the first week of February. Applicants will have 1 week to respond to committee feedback before the final vote.
Last semester, the number of student submitted applications doubled, and $4,620 was awarded to 9 different projects representing 7 different organizations!
For more details on the program, a summary of previously approved grants, and tips from the committee on how to write a stellar grant application, please read All About Buggy Enhancement Grants.
If you would like to support this program, please consider donating to the Buggy Endowed Fund. Your gift will help perpetually fund this grant program and keep the buggy hype rolling for generations to come! A donation of at least $1000 to the endowment is recognized on our placard in the University Center and with a lifetime membership to the Buggy Alumni Association. There is no shortage of excellent project proposals coming from the community, so please consider supporting this program. Join us Now!
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.
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.
