Mirrors
Pending room reservations, the main site will be at VCU, located in scenic Richmond, VA, on August 8th (the weekend of the Watermelon Festival). A separate announcement will follow once rooms are confirmed.
Current mirrors include:
- UC Berkeley in Berkeley, CA - Aug. 8th
- University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI – Aug. 8th
- WUSTL in St. Louis, MO - Aug. 8th
- UL Lafayette in Lafayette, LA - Aug. 15th
- University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON – Aug. 15th
- Valencia College in Orlando, FL – Aug. 22nd
Mirrors in other locations will be considered. The mirror fee is $40 per team. If you would like to host a mirror, please contact me at [email protected].
Set Details
VCUO ‘15 will be written and edited by Cody Voight, Will Nediger, Evan Adams, Kenji Golimlim, and Matt Bollinger. The difficulty is “Regionals+”, as defined by VCUO ‘11.
Writing breakdown:
Cody—Science (with contributions from Akhil Garg); Music; Trash Film; Geography
Will—British, European, and World Literature; Painting & Film & Music; Trash Music; Philosophy and Social Science
Evan—American Literature; American History; Misc. Fine Arts; Religion; Trash TV
Kenji—European and World History; Current Events; Geography; some Trash
Matt—British and Classical History; Myth; some Trash
VCUO ‘15 will be implementing a Gaddis-style difficulty quota for answerlines, based on a 4-point scale:
1 – ACF Fall
2 – ACF Regionals
3 – ACF Nationals
4 – ++
Each packet will have approximately (4) 1’s, (8) 2’s, (6) 3’s, and (2) 4’s. This is a difficulty ceiling, not floor, so an answerline that might appear at ACF Fall can be categorized as a 1, 2, 3, or 4.
Tossups are hard-capped at 8 lines for 1’s and 7 lines for 2-4’s.
As the name implies, VCUO ‘15 is an open tournament and there are no eligibility restrictions.
Distribution
VCUO ‘15 will consist of 15 packets. The distribution is modeled on VCUO ‘11 and is as follows:
4/4 Literature (30% American, 30% British, 25% European, 15% World)
4/4 History (25% American, 25% European, 20% World, 15% British, 15% Classical)
4/4 Science (25% Biology, 16.67% Chemistry, 25% Physics, 11.67% Math, 11.67% Earth Science, 5% Astronomy, 5% Computer Science)
3/3 Fine Arts (split evenly between Painting, Music, and Miscellaneous Arts)
2/2 R/M (split evenly between Religion and Myth)
1/1 Trash
1/1 P/SS (split evenly between Philosophy and Social Science)
1/1 G/C/GK (40% Geography, 40% Current Events, 20% Geography, Current Events, or “General Knowledge”)
An additional 5/5 tiebreakers will be provided as a separate packet—1/1 each from Literature, History, Science, Fine Arts, and Religion/Myth.