What should I tell an ACUI person?

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What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Mettius Fufetius »

Hi quizbowl,

Some guy sent me the following e-mail:

Good morning! My name is [his name] and I am [his job title at Furman, which involves coordinating student events]. I have recently been told that FACT, the student academic competition group has become active again. The Association of College Unions International (ACUI), which is the professional organization for college unions now sponsors [an] Academic Challenge competition for students. I would like to sit down with you and talk to you about what FACT does and the possibility of maybe participating in the competition.

As far as I know, FACT has not been involved in the ACUI intramural. (There used to be something in the constitution about intramurals, but I took it out.) I'm inclined to simply recommend the NAQT intramural set, but how should I sell it to him? Is there anything in particular I should know about dealing with ACUI? And is there any way we can use this as a recruiting tool, given that our club is small and probably can't even moderate this event, much less write a full set for it?
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by mhayes »

When he says "participate", is he referring to having your club field a team, or simply having you staff the event? In any case, this event would be a great recruiting tool for your club, seeing as you don't have many members. Regardless of the capacity in which your club participates in this event, you certainly shouldn't miss an opportunity to promote your organization here.

I don't know much about ACUI other than its affiliation with CBI, so this event is likely a holdover from the CBI campus tournament. Once again, It would probably be in your club's best interests to participate in this event in some capacity, whether as players or staffers.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Yeah, like Matt said. You never know, there's a chance you could find a decent teammate or two at one of these competitions, and it never hurts to staff a tournament, anyway.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Auroni »

yeah, try to use this competition to get people in your club. If that requires playing in it, that's a necessary evil you might have to undertake.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by cchiego »

According to newsletters like this http://bit.ly/1HDivm, it looks like ACUI is actually getting closer to endorsing "good quizbowl." At the very least they ruled out "Richard Reid Productions" and "Bryce Avery Enterprises," which is more than I would've thought they'd do.

I see no harm in talking to them to see what you can do to put on some kind of intramural. It would be a good recruitment event and who knows, they might pay you guys to write easy questions for it or something.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Mike Bentley »

I've heard a rumor that, at least in the Northwest, that ACUI signed or was about to sign a contract with NAQT.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by mhayes »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:I've heard a rumor that, at least in the Northwest, that ACUI signed or was about to sign a contract with NAQT.
That would be great. If the agreement was for all regions, then there could be a surge of new teams in the non-CBI formats.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by evilmonkey »

I've heard a rumor that ACUI will be finalizing details in the next week or two on how they will be incorporated into the existing sectionals/nationals structure of NAQT. I still have to finalize things with the student activities guy who requested a meeting with me, but it seems that, at least at Notre Dame, the quizbowl club will be in charge of running the intramural tournament, and the people who attend SCT will not at all be tied to who wins that intramural tournament. I will not speculate on how things will be run at other schools.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Charbroil »

uga_chris wrote:According to newsletters like this http://bit.ly/1HDivm, it looks like ACUI is actually getting closer to endorsing "good quizbowl." At the very least they ruled out "Richard Reid Productions" and "Bryce Avery Enterprises," which is more than I would've thought they'd do.
Just one caveat to this--it may be kind of obvious, but let's hope that NAQT is offering question sets at least at the difficulty of the DII SCT for ACUI, rather than using IS sets like some recent conferences (including the one mentioned here: http://region13.acui.org/Region/13/tournament.php and the Big South Conference) seem to.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Mike Bentley »

Charbroil wrote:
uga_chris wrote:According to newsletters like this http://bit.ly/1HDivm, it looks like ACUI is actually getting closer to endorsing "good quizbowl." At the very least they ruled out "Richard Reid Productions" and "Bryce Avery Enterprises," which is more than I would've thought they'd do.
Just one caveat to this--it may be kind of obvious, but let's hope that NAQT is offering question sets at least at the difficulty of the DII SCT for ACUI, rather than using IS sets like some recent conferences (including the one mentioned here: http://region13.acui.org/Region/13/tournament.php and the Big South Conference) seem to.
I sent an e-mail to R. with some concerns about this (our Student Union Contact talked about things like limiting schools by number of teams, region, and grad students and potential "changes to questions" but she seemed pretty unclear with details) and he said to wait a few weeks on the details.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by evilmonkey »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote: I sent an e-mail to R. with some concerns about this (our Student Union Contact talked about things like limiting schools by number of teams, region, and grad students and potential "changes to questions" but she seemed pretty unclear with details) and he said to wait a few weeks on the details.
Hmm... our student activities person seemed to think that ACUI was planning on making some (indefinite) changes to adapt to NAQT, rather than the other way around.

I think this shows that ACUI hasn't finished making decisions, and that most things are still on the table.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by tiwonge »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:I've heard a rumor that, at least in the Northwest, that ACUI signed or was about to sign a contract with NAQT.
Can you forward me any information you get about this, so that I can pass it on? We had a recent change in grad student leadership in our Student Activities, and while the new guy still wants to do quiz bowl stuff intramurally, they didn't get a tournament organized this semester.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Mike Bentley »

Colin, I don't have any written details yet. I'll forward them to you once I get them.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Mettius Fufetius »

I had the meeting today. The information conveyed to me, as best I understand it, was as follows:

- ACUI has indeed recently signed a contract with NAQT.
- Historically, ACUI offered CBI at some catch-all event called "Leisure Weekend." At least in our region, ACUI made an agreement a long time ago to have that event at UT Knoxville the weekend of 2/20/10. ACUI wanted NAQT to move SCT to that date, but since the contract only just got signed, that didn't happen. Instead, Leisure Weekend is being split up into two weekends, one for SCT and one for everything else. Many ACUI programs, possibly including Furman, may not be able to go to both weekends due to funding constraints.
- If our ACUI can't afford to go to the quizbowl Leisure Weekend, it (probably?) won't sponsor an intramural tournament.

Apparently they're still working this all out, and additional information is supposedly forthcoming.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by mhayes »

So does that mean that the ACUI at UT-Knoxville is hosting a sectional on 2/13? Since the agreement was just signed, we may see more ACUI chapters at different schools hosting the SCT. I'm suddenly not so sure that the agreement was a good idea after all.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Important Bird Area »

Marchbanks wrote:- ACUI has indeed recently signed a contract with NAQT.
...
Apparently they're still working this all out, and additional information is supposedly forthcoming.
I'll go ahead and confirm both of these statements from our end. I'll post a new thread in just a second.
mhayes wrote:So does that mean that the ACUI at UT-Knoxville is hosting a sectional on 2/13?
No, it means UT-Knoxville has submitted a bid to host SCT on the scheduled date, February 6th.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by nobthehobbit »

mhayes wrote:So does that mean that the ACUI at UT-Knoxville is hosting a sectional on 2/13? Since the agreement was just signed, we may see more ACUI chapters at different schools hosting the SCT. I'm suddenly not so sure that the agreement was a good idea after all.
Yeah, I'm wondering what'll be going on with that, too. I was hoping that SCT and ICT would continue to be run as they always have been, with anyone being able to host and anyone able to play anywhere (with as many teams as they want), but if ACUI schools are going to get higher priority, this was a bad idea.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Important Bird Area »

Marchbanks wrote:ACUI wanted NAQT to move SCT to that date [February 20th], but since the contract only just got signed, that didn't happen.
I'm assuming this was a minority opinion somewhere within ACUI, perhaps only at the local level. We have not been asked to move the 2010 SCT date, nor would we. (Because that date is ACF Regionals!)
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by nobthehobbit »

bt_green_warbler wrote:
mhayes wrote:So does that mean that the ACUI at UT-Knoxville is hosting a sectional on 2/13?
No, it means UT-Knoxville has submitted a bid to host SCT on the scheduled date, February 6th.
Maybe this'll be answered in the other thread, but why does this page say quite clearly that the NAQT Sectional will be held at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville?
University of Tennessee, Knoxville ACUI wrote:When: February 5-6, 2010 for NAQT Sectional
When: February 19-20, 2010 for Recreation Tournaments and Poetry Slam
Where: All events are at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Mettius Fufetius »

bt_green_warbler wrote:
Marchbanks wrote:ACUI wanted NAQT to move SCT to that date [February 20th], but since the contract only just got signed, that didn't happen.
I'm assuming this was a minority opinion somewhere within ACUI, perhaps only at the local level. We have not been asked to move the 2010 SCT date, nor would we. (Because that date is ACF Regionals!)
Well, not everything was expressed clearly. The rep may just have been saying that, with more notice, the rest of Leisure Weekend could have been moved to accommodate the SCT date; I'm not really sure. It seemed clear that they wished SCT to take place alongside future Leisure Weekends, though.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Broad-tailed Grassbird »

I remember my freshman year the college bowl and ACUI regionals was at MSU. It was very strange. There was bowling, poker, and pool, and all sorts of other random folk from Michigan and Ohio. There was also a Joel Knight spotting.

It was very oddly placed in our union, and I don't think they would be able to handle an SCT there. Regardless, NAQT will attract a lot more schools than college bowl, unless it's some watered down product (aka an IS set).

Hopefully this can be a way to get more schools involved in good quiz bowl.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Important Bird Area »

nalin wrote:Regardless, NAQT will attract a lot more schools than college bowl, unless it's some watered down product (aka an IS set).
Rest assured that we have no intention of replacing SCT with IS sets.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

bt_green_warbler wrote:
nalin wrote:Regardless, NAQT will attract a lot more schools than college bowl, unless it's some watered down product (aka an IS set).
Rest assured that we have no intention of replacing SCT with IS sets.
I think Nalin's just saying that the only NAQT product that could ever attract fewer schools than CBI would be a college tournament run on an IS set. I don't know how true that claim is, but I don't think he was intimating that.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by dxdtdemon »

Will this partnership force people to attend SCT only in their ACUI region? If so, there wouldn't be a Canadian tournament, and teams would have to all have passports just to attend when it is held in the other country.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by theMoMA »

quantumfootball wrote:Will this partnership force people to attend SCT only in their ACUI region? If so, there wouldn't be a Canadian tournament, and teams would have to all have passports just to attend when it is held in the other country.
I think it's probably safe to hold that kind of speculation until NAQT announces the parameters of its agreement.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by OntarioQuizzer »

quantumfootball wrote:Will this partnership force people to attend SCT only in their ACUI region? If so, there wouldn't be a Canadian tournament, and teams would have to all have passports just to attend when it is held in the other country.
I certainly hope that the partnership allows for some sort of "hybrid" arrangement, where there are regional ACUI sectionals, in addition to "open sectionals" -- including one in Canada.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Coelacanth »

quantumfootball wrote:Will this partnership force people to attend SCT only in their ACUI region? If so, there wouldn't be a Canadian tournament, and teams would have to all have passports just to attend when it is held in the other country.
There's no reason this would preclude a Canadian site. ACUI regions extend into Canada. The "I" stands for International, after all.

But, as Andrew said, no reason to speculate now. I'm sure there will be a full annoucement forthcoming from NAQT and ACUI.
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Re: What should I tell an ACUI person?

Post by Important Bird Area »

The announcement is up on naqt.com; I'll answer further questions on the new ACUI thread.
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