The Quizbowl Resource Center

Hello, everyone. This spring, Princeton University will be hosting a mirror of the Eisenhower Memorial Tournament; full details for the set can be found here. I will be serving as tournament director.

Date:
We were unable to secure our facilities on our preferred date of April 1; instead, we would like to invite interested teams to rank their preferred dates from among the following: April 15, April 29, and May 6. Preferences can be discussed in this thread. If any (or all) of these dates absolutely do not work, please let us know that as well—the last thing we want is for teams not to be able to play this tournament, so if worst comes to worst we would like to be able to pass off the torch of tournament directing to another school in a timely manner.
Update: this tournament will take place on April 15.

Location and Time:
The tournament will take place in Robertson Hall. A map of campus can be found here.

Check-in will begin on the day of the tournament at 8:30 am. We hope to begin the first match by 9:00 am.

Eligibility:
Per the original announcement: “Only undergraduate and high school students can play this tournament. If you are a grad student, you generally may not play. "Undergraduate" in this case does not follow the traditional ACF definition--fifth-year (or greater) undergraduates with no bachelor's-level degree are still eligible to play. (This is identical to the eligibility rules of last year's MUT.) Exceptions may be granted based on [the tournament writers’] discretion, depending on the state of the local circuit.”

Registration and Fees:
College base fee: $120
High School base fee: $100
Buzzer discount: -$5 per working system.
Staff discount: -$10 per staffer, subject to TD approval. Staffers will also be provided with lunch.
Travel discount: -$10 per 200 miles traveled one-way, as determined by Google Maps.

Minimum fee: $40

To register for this tournament, please e-mail me at [email protected]. Please include in your email the number of teams, buzzers, and staffers you plan on bringing, as well as a cell phone number that can be used to contact you on the day of the tournament. If you don’t hear back from me within a few days, please try again.

Payment can be made in the form of cash or check on the day of the tournament. Checks should be made out to “Princeton University Quiz Bowl.”

Lunch:
Lunch will not be provided, except to staff. A number of eating options are available on Nassau Street at the north end of campus. Teams can also purchase lunch at Frist Campus Center.

Field (12/18):
Delaware
Gettysburg
High Tech - 2
Ithaca
JHU
NYU - 2
Penn
Princeton
Swarthmore
Yale

The field will be tentatively capped at the first 18 teams to register.

For Gettysburg, April 29 would be the preferable date. People may have plans to visit family over the weekend of the 15th as it is Easter weekend and then May 6 is the weekend before our finals. We would look into the possibility of attending on either of the latter two dates should it be the most popular, but the 29th is definitely our preference.

April 29 and May 6 are right around finals for us, so April 15 will likely be the most popular date if we do manage to get enough interest.

NYU prefers the 15th.

Rutgers is running a High School tourney April 15 so preferably not that date (for us at least)

Darien HS will likely field a team on April 15 or May 6, but we'll be playing another tournament April 29 so we wouldn't be able to attend then.

I think Ithaca would only be able to make it on May 6.

"Sally Hemmings" will only be able to make it on May 6th.

Penn would prefer the 15th to avoid our finals week.

JHU would prefer April 15th.

Jared, do you have an idea of when you're going to decide the date for the tournament? So far, five schools have expressed the desire to play on April 15, so that seems like a good date to hold it.

kitakule wrote:Jared, do you have an idea of when you're going to decide the date for the tournament? So far, five schools have expressed the desire to play on April 15, so that seems like a good date to hold it.

Speaking in my purely unofficial capacities as "guy submitting the room reservation forms" and "guy who's talked to Jared about this," we'll probably make a call on the date and announce it some time this weekend.

For what it's worth, Delaware can come at any date. Our possibility of bringing a second team would be highest on the 6th, then the 29th.

We definitely will attend if this is on the 29th or 6th, possibly two teams but probably only sending 1; we will be unable attend on the 15th.

jasongg17 wrote:

kitakule wrote:Jared, do you have an idea of when you're going to decide the date for the tournament? So far, five schools have expressed the desire to play on April 15, so that seems like a good date to hold it.

Speaking in my purely unofficial capacities as "guy submitting the room reservation forms" and "guy who's talked to Jared about this," we'll probably make a call on the date and announce it some time this weekend.

This is correct; plan for an announcement by the end of tomorrow (Saturday) night after I have an opportunity to confer with my co-president. The 29th clearly seems to be the least popular date, so you can bet it will be on either the 15th or May 6th; the 15th seems to be somewhat preferred to the 6th, but also seems to be the date on which more teams have explicitly expressed an inability to attend. Please feel free to continue sharing thoughts up through tomorrow night--we want to be able to be as accommodating as possible when we make our decision!

There's a chance I can bring the UConn team to this if it's on 4/15, but definitely not if it's 5/6.

Columbia will probably send about 3 teams, and prefers the 15th or 29th of April. We cannot attend on May 6th.

Okay, so April 15th definitely seems to be the most popular choice now, and works better for us logistically as well. Pending room reservations, this tournament will take place on April 15; May 6 will serve as the back-up date. Failing both of these (which is pretty unlikely), we will go with April 29. I've already asked for a room request to be put in, and I will update this thread as soon as I receive confirmation.

I also want to apologize to all the teams that can't make it on the 15th; I know EMT is a pretty well-anticipated question set, but it simply wasn't possible for us to select a date on which every team could attend. I certainly hope that you are still able to attend another nearby site, such as VCU on March 25 or a New England mirror should one pop up.

Rooms have been confirmed; this tournament will definitely take place on April 15!

With the addition of teams from Delaware and Gettysburg, the field for this tournament is now half full!

This tournament is well under way; we are keeping running stats at this link.

This tournament has concluded. NYU A defeated Ithaca in the play-in to a disadvantaged final against Princeton, and subsequently won the first game before falling to Princeton in the second game. See the link in the previous post for full stats.

I want to thank everyone who came out to play and staff today, especially Eric for travelling from Penn to staff and Ziv from Swarthmore for coming with the intent to staff. I hope this was an enjoyable experience for everyone involved!

Also, I think it's fair to say that Princeton has, historically, earned a reputation for running tournaments that are not particularly well-organized and suffer from various setbacks. In an effort to improve the tournaments hosted by the Princeton team, we welcome any and all feedback regarding the conduct of our mirror of EMT. Feel free to post feedback in this thread or e-mail me at [email protected].

Finally, please remember that there are still mirrors of EMT that have yet to take place; any discussion of the questions should be confined to the private thread for the set.