Hi everyone, it’s getting to be that time of year again! We are looking to elect several new people to officer positions, including President, Reporting Officer, and Webmaster. You can read about the positions in the nomination form here. If you’d like to hear more or get in touch with the current officer in the position, feel free to reach out on our Discord or send an email to admin at cmubuggy.org! I’d like to thank everyone for their amazing work in putting together BAA events and community in the face of all the challenges over the past year, and I’m overjoyed to see the return of rolls (and rolls reports!) these past weekends.
Also a big thanks to those in the community who have contributed to committee meetings, our social events (Among Us!) and mentorship resources — if you have any interest in being formally recognized for your work, feel free to nominate yourself for an officer position. And if you have an idea for a project that needs a new one, or just want to jump in and help out, feel free to reach out any time. We couldn’t do it without you!
Welcome to our special quarantine edition of Rolls! It’s been a bit over a year since buggies have graced the streets of Pittsburgh, but they’re back. Slow and steady will win this race.
After a series of unprecedented and very unfortunate events, Sweepstakes has found a way to keep the spirit of buggy alive and return to the course. Rolls look very different this year and Sweepstakes is working with the university to ensure the safety of all its participants. A couple of changes include a limit to 4 teams per day of rolls and a limit of 2 buggies per team along with the allowed number of team members. This weekend we saw (not in person of course) a solid start with 7 teams making an appearance. Saturday, teams were able to get up to 5 rolls in and Sunday saw an incredible 8 cycles.
The weekend was not without its hiccups, but hey that’s just buggy for you. Even some pesky hooligans moving bales to Flagstaff Hill and some very unfriendly window washers weren’t able to stop our determined students!
Atlas made a return to the course as this year’s only robotic buggy team (for now). The youngest org on the course was unfortunately unable to wake Baby Buggy up from its nap and get it around the course.
But there really isn’t all that much I can do with WordPress
Apex decided to stick with the classics and brought out Firefly on Sunday for an impressive 7 rolls.
Always makes me happy to see my baby out on the course :’)
Soooooooooo…..
CIA unveiled Kingfisher’s stunning paint job! It was reported that Kingfisher had some technical difficulties leading to a stop and was benched for the rest of the day, but the team managed to get the most rolls (8) of any team in Emperor.
Check out Kingfisher’s gorgeous colors!
Fringe and SDC hit the ground running quite literally with Saturday rollarounds. Fringe brought out Blind Faith and their newest buggy, Baltic.
Looking forward to seeing Baltic post paint job!
SDC rolled back to back with Fringe on Saturday racking up 4 rolls in Vanity.
Definitely my favorite color.
SigEp had a bit of a rough day, but we hope to see them out and around the course this upcoming weekend! After two stops (one from a bad wheel and another from a loose helmet), the team decided to scratch for the day leading to the Fringe/SDC rollarounds.
See you guys next week!
Spirit. Got some alliteration for you here since Spirit snagged six cycles with Seraph. That’s all I got.
Hi.
Meme of the Week:
Trying something new here since I had to do something with this picture of Carl (this year’s Design Comp. Chair). Carl was making all the girls swoon with the way he was carrying all those barricades on his own.
CMU has spearheaded the design and development of a Buggy Centennial Celebration art installation in the Cohon University Center, next to the auditorium entrance. Included in this 6’x20′ permanent installation is a list of BAA Lifetime Members in recognition of their gifts to Buggy. All current and future Lifetime Members will be listed with their indicia (if they wish) on an acrylic plate with black vinyl lettering. Although we are committed to updating this list with future Lifetime Members, we wanted to give people a chance to be a part of the inaugural group, to be unveiled at Carnival later this year.
We’re currently in the process of writing letters to thank those who have already donated, and recognize that we have unfulfilled promises still; 2 t-shirts and lifetime membership badge to be delivered at the next in-person Raceday we’re able to host. At the same time, we wanted to let folks know about this unique opportunity to be recognized and added to the installation in time for the formal unveiling.
Early Concept of CUC Display
If you are interested in becoming a Lifetime Member, please make a gift of $1,000 or more to the Buggy Endowed Fund by following the link below. Starting next semester, yields from the Buggy Endowed Fund will be distributed to student projects which “support the continued success and growth of Sweepstakes”. Yields from the Endowed Fund (as of this writing, approximately $2,500 yearly) will be designated to projects by a committee of students, alumni, and staff which will meet regularly to consider formal proposals. We’ll publish the bylaws for this committee shortly for those interested in reading more on how it works.
If you’d like to receive confirmation that your name will be added to the display in time for this year, please email your gift receipt to admin@cmubuggy.org and we’ll make sure that everything is squared away.
Lastly, we want to thank those who have given gifts this year at any level. The students are working hard to make rolls happen this semester and your contribution will support Sweepstakes this year and for years to come. We’re excited to share our plans for Carnival soon and promise to be in touch!
I hope this message finds you happy and safe. In light of communication from the university regarding Carnival plans, we wanted to update you all with what’s been happening this year. We had hoped to write about the resumption of rolls since the fall semester has started but unfortunately I can’t say that is true yet.
As the university email states, alumni events for Carnival are currently being planned all virtually. At this time, students are still patiently waiting for the verdict on their proposed activities. We have several exciting events in the works and hope to share more soon, but for now, here’s our updates:
CUC Buggy Centennial Display: The artwork and design for the Centennial memorial display is being finalized and installation is planned in time for Carnival this year. We’re hoping to offer some kind of virtual unveiling event, so stay tuned!
Season 2 of Chute the Sh!t Podcast with Will Weiner: Will and Rachael have been hard at work coordinating the plan for another podcast season to follow up on last year. They’re still accepting suggestions for people to host, so feel free to drop a comment or reply if you have any ideas!
Buggy All-Stars returns: The Advanced Game Design class has agreed to continue development on the Buggy All-Stars game released last year. We can’t wait to see what new features they come up with next!
Alternate Design Competition: We’re working hard with the students to plan an alternate version of Design Competition for Carnival this year that can integrate remote students as well as virtual judges and potentially spectators. No new buggies have been permitted to be built this year so it is not likely to resemble our traditional Design Competition, but there is pretty good agreement that we want some flavor of replacement.
Among Us alumni social events: We’ve had a blast coordinating and playing Among Us with you all and definitely plan to continue that! Feel free to suggest other kinds of open social events we can host throughout the year.
Buggy 101 themed content: If the students are approved for in-person activities, we have a plan and some content ready to go to try and help drive student engagement. Unfortunately, we won’t have approval at least until 2/15, as the COVID rules committee won’t consider the students’ revisions until in-person activities are allowed to resume.
Endowed Fund progress: The Endowed Fund committee bylaws have been finalized and await administrative approval. Our first round of proposals and funding is very likely to go out in 2021, we just aren’t sure whether it will be in time for the spring at this point. Of course, the fund has been accruing yields for nearly a year at this point, which all are ready for disbursal — more on that when we give our financial update later on.
Buggy Build Book: Notable recent alumni Connor Hayes and Diya Nuxoll have been hard at work on an open-source build book. Although it’s not quite ready to go public yet, we are hoping revisions will be complete before Carnival and are very excited at what will likely be the definitive public resource for building a buggy.
We’ll send out some updates once we hear more in the form of an email newsletter to our distribution list. If you’d like to be added or have any questions, we can be reached by email (admin@cmubuggy.org) as well as through Facebook/Twitter/Instagram or join us on our Discord chat server!
With new students arriving on campus and recruitment happening virtually this year, we thought we’d put together a list of teams and contact info for people to reference. This is also the first post in “Buggy 101”, our upcoming content series focused on introductory material to support the Buggy community.
Below is a list of active sweepstakes organizations, their chairs’ contact info, and a team website if they have one. Every team has their own unique character so be sure to shop around! It would be best to email contact, but if you like you can comment on this post. If you have any general questions, feel free to email buggy@andrew.cmu.edu .
As students move back on campus in the fall, we thought it’d be a great time to highlight the group that will be leading the effort this year. The Raceday 2021 Sweepstakes Committee has been working hard to prep for the fall so look out for updates of what this group is up to!
Chairwoman: Tishya Girdhar was a driver and mechanic for fringe for three years, and served as Safety Chair last year. She’s looking forward to help plan Buggy 100+! (as we’re casually calling it). Feel free to reach out to her if you have any suggestions/ideas!!
Safety Chair: Bethany Bauer is a senior physics major in SHS. Previously, she’s served as a driver and mechanic on Apex. Bethany is excited to be your safety chair!
Assistant Chair: Natalie Herrmann is a rising senior studying Civil Engineering. She was a mechanic for Fringe the past 3 years, and served as their Chairman for the past 2 years. Apart from buggy, she’s also involved with Fringe and ASCE booth. She’s pumped for this year, and can’t wait to see what all the teams can do!
Design Comp Chair: Carl Young was previously the Head Mechanic for SigEp Racing, A-Team Hill 3, and Chairman! He’s ready to carry on the good work put in last year to make the “100th anniversary of Raceday” the best yet!
This is the third and final follow-up update from the Raceday 2020 Town Hall. If you weren’t able to make it to the Town Hall, you can take a listen here. New updates are in Bold.
Membership and benefits — Complete (3/31)
Consolation print: Essentially complete. If you requested shipping and have completed payment, your poster should be shipped. If you wanted to take advantage in-person pickup at the bottom of Hill One (starting line), Ben will be there with posters at the following time:
Budget — Complete. We have just received our latest financial update which covers our account through the end of June. With your unprecedented support in the last year-to-date, we have raised $15,462 directly, and $1,912 dollars in university matching. To give a sense of scope, this is about twice the amount we would spend on Raceday and about what we were expecting to contribute to Buggy100, which will of course roll over into the next Raceday. Although we do receive some support from employer matching, this is likely underutilized. Don’t forget to ask your employer if they are willing to match your contributions!
Homecoming Vision — Complete. Homecoming has been confirmed for the weekend of October 17th. We’re actively collaborating with CMU staff to bring Buggy events to the programming and exploring available time slots and formats but remaining flexible given the current environment. Of course now that we’ve transitioned to Fall programming and content, we’ll keep you up to date in future posts on new event offerings!
New content including livestream — Complete (4/30)
Elections — Complete. Please refer to our previous post about election results for more information.
Gifts for students — Complete! Thanks to Diya for helping us distribute the senior gifts. We also want to welcome those seniors who took advantage of our free membership offer to the BAA!
This is our friend Joanne, an Apex driver who recently passed away after fighting leukemia for almost a year. She drove Azula for Raceday 2018, and was a great friend and an important member of our team. Joanne was one of the warmest, friendliest, most reliable people any of us have had the pleasure of meeting. She handled frigid, early rolls with a smile and a snarky attitude. She was always willing to give us her all, fitting herself into our tightest, most uncomfortable buggy with a positive(ish) attitude. While she may have been driver-sized, she had more strength and resilience than anyone. She faced every hurdle with stubbornness and determination, and she never gave up or stopped caring about her friends. She was hilarious, wicked smart, and, above all, a great teammate and friend. We love Joanne and her friendship and warmth made all of our lives infinitely better.
In her memory, some people on our team put together a virtual bone marrow registry drive. Bone marrow donation is an important part of battling leukemia and other similar conditions, but it is very difficult to find a match for everyone who needs a donor due to the genetic complexity of bone marrow. The buggy community is partnering with Be The Match, a national bone marrow registry that helps connect people with compatible donors as quickly as possible so they can get the life-saving treatment they need. About one in 300 people gets selected to donate, and if you are selected, your expenses are covered. It is an outpatient procedure and it is minimally invasive– yet it truly can mean life or death for these patients.
How you can help: If you are between 18 and 44 and in good health, you are eligible to become a donor. Registering is quick and easy; all you have to do is sign a consent form and send a cheek swab, which they send you in the mail. You can start by either texting “CMU” to 61474 or click on the online link https://join.bethematch.org/CMU. Use these personalized links so we can accurately count how many individuals have joined the registry in Joanne’s honor. Otherwise, please spread the word and encourage your friends and family to register. More information can be found at https://bethematch.org/ and at this doc. Please contact Amanda Vallon at axoknpresident@gmail.com with any questions.
Joanne lives on in all of us, and it’s up to us to make the positive impact in the world that she would want to make. Her kindness and spirit continue to radiate outwards and our hope is that we can direct this love to people who are fighting a battle similar to hers.
So here we are, at the end of the 100 Years of Buggy History. The goal of this series was to help celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Buggy at Carnegie Mellon by diving into the history of the sport a little deeper than you might otherwise find in the “History” tab on this site. It’s one thing to see that Beta won in 1935 with a course record, and it’s important for the legacy of the sport. But this series wanted to go beyond that. What buggy did they use? Who were the teams that they were battling against? How many heats were run? How close was the finish? And did you know that someone actually tried to sabotage them before the race?
Hi all, here are your new officers for the 2020-2022 term!
Vice President Willy Clark
Graphics Katelyn Smith
The remaining officers were all re-elected to their positions and we’re overjoyed to have Treasurer Bryan Arsham, Secretary Rachel Schmitt, and Broadcast Officer Will Weiner returning for second terms.
Thanks everyone for voting and participating in the election process! I will be in contact to get our new officers on board as quickly as possible and look forward to building an amazing buggy experience next year.
