ACUI/NAQT partnership comes to an end

[Important Bird Area]

NAQT's most recent contract with the Association of College Unions International (ACUI) came to an end on June 30, 2013, and both parties have agreed not to sign another extension.

NAQT wishes the ACUI Academic Challenge committee good luck with its future endeavors, but also hopes that member schools that have enjoyed quiz bowl and NAQT's intramural and sectional question sets will continue to participate in its events.

In light of the partnership's expiration, NAQT plans to revise the structure of its collegiate programs; those changes will be in place and announced by the start of the next competition year (September 1).

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I'd like to hear a bit more of a postmortem on this attempted partnership, from the community if not from NAQT. It seemed to me as though this partnership didn't have much real positive effect on the growth of quizbowl at all, because top-down attempts at new team formation really don't seem to work and it arbitrarily limited the ability of coherent quizbowl circuits to set their own SCT sites. Are there people who felt like ACUI helped them or their regions? Can someone with more direct experience speak to what went wrong or what we more broadly might be able to learn from this attempt?

Also, I'm wondering how drastic these changes are going to be; while I know you want to wait to make the announcement until later, can we get some advance warning if something really game-changing such as "oh hey, we're reviving the fall NAQT tournament" happens and we have to think about big logistics/scheduling adjustments?

[sephirothrr]

This means we can go get the NCAA on board, right?

[bradleykirksey]

I know I'm a little late, but I'd like to second what Matt said. To get funding from the school for tournaments, we have to get paperwork in 8 weeks in advance, and we can only get funding for two tournaments. If there were big changes, especially if it's in the early part of the school year or involving money, then we'd appreciate a heads up.

For reference sake, does anyone know what the district maps looked like before the partnership, in like 2007 or so. Vanderbilt and Tulane played in the southeast, so it looked like ours was a lot bigger.

[jonpin]

Before the partnership, there were no district maps, i.e. there was no geographic restriction on where teams played at SCT. On some occasions, a university sent teams to multiple SCTs and that was kosher.

[cdcarter]

In light of the partnership's expiration, NAQT plans to revise the structure of its collegiate programs; those changes will be in place and announced by the start of the next competition year (September 1).

Forgive me if I missed them, but have these changes been announced?

[Important Bird Area]

We have not; I'll post here when we're ready to make an announcement.

[Important Bird Area]

In light of the partnership's expiration, NAQT plans to revise the structure of its collegiate programs; those changes will be in place and announced by the start of the next competition year (September 1).

Forgive me if I missed them, but have these changes been announced?

These policy changes are now public; our apologies for the delay in posting.

There is no longer a fixed set of "Regions" that, in theory, have exactly one SCT each. NAQT's host call has informally identified a number of regions, but that has been done to serve as a guide to the community as to the number and density of SCTs that NAQT would like to see. NAQT may award zero, one, or more Sectionals in each region (and the regions' boundaries are intentionally vague, to maximize flexibility).

Hosts will be responsible for invoicing teams and collecting money from them. This means that each host will need to send a check to NAQT covering the licensing fee (rather than receiving a check from NAQT for all monies in excess of the licensing fee).

Schools may attend any SCT that they wish (regardless of distance), but may only send teams to a single SCT (without prior permission from NAQT).

The number of Division II ICT bids reserved for teams from the Community College Championship Tournament (CCCT) has been decreased from six to four.