2023 Carper Award community discussion

[theMoMA]

Each year, ACF awards up to two Carper Awards to honor individuals who have, over their quizbowl careers, sustained and enriched collegiate academic competitions. One of those awards is (as it has been since 1999) decided by membership vote, and the other (created four years ago) is decided by a committee of former Carper winners who are members of ACF.

Although there are no stringent eligibility criteria (such as number of years since retirement from active play, etc.), the committee award is meant to recognize the contributions of people whom the membership vote has overlooked. Because of the passage of time, it may not occur to the present ACF membership to nominate people who have made a lasting impact on college quizbowl in more remote times, and these are the people we're especially looking to honor with the committee award. In the past four years, the committee has recognized Kelly McKenzie, Mike Sorice, Jim Dendy, and Chris Borglum.

In response to an excellent idea from the ACF membership, I'd once again like to invite the community to suggest names for the committee to consider for its 2023 Carper Award. (We have already nominated a slate of finalists for the membership vote.) These will just be suggestions rather than formal nominations, but we'll consider all the information carefully, and it will us in our internal nomination and voting process. Suggestions before February 14 will be particularly helpful. Thanks in advance!

[Cheynem]

I again think an award honoring people who have done invaluable work in Canada and the U.K. is in order. From previous discussions, I know the names of Joe Su and Edmund Dickinson have been floated here.

Ryan Westbrook needs to win this at some point in his career.

I have never met either of these people, but Dave Hamilton and Raj Bhan head edited ACF Nationals multiple times early in the tournament's history, so I think they should receive consideration. Both Dave and Raj edited a string of ACF tournaments in the late 1990s-early 2000s, at a time I would argue when collegiate quizbowl was greatly changing. (Again, I know nothing about them other than their careers so if they are actually problematic figures, I apologize.)

I also would like to see another award honoring someone not particularly noted for writing and editing and more for service/outreach/logistics. This could relate to the Canada/UK suggestion above.

[Gene Harrogate]

I would like to put forward Joe Su's name for consideration. Over the past 13 years or so, the Canadian circuit has grown from a few small tournaments to being one of the most established and active in North America. The driving force in this change has been Joe. Joe's organizational work almost single-handedly sustained the McGill quizbowl club for years, but his accomplishments there are minor compared to his cross-circuit involvement. He was the first Canadian to consistently liason between schools, establishing networks that persist even now in planning tournaments and sharing institutional knowledge. Every year, Joe spearheaded almost every tournament mirror and is pretty much responsible for the existence of a novice tournament in Canada. He saw the long-term benefits in mobilizing as many teams as possible to housewrites and ACF Fall, and worked heroically to bring new teams into the fold. He took a geographically expansive view; even in Joe's more busy recent years, his guidance has been a signficant element in quizbowl's recent resurgence in Ottawa. The number of tournaments he directed and compiled stats for---travelling at his own expense, with no official affiliation to the hosts---is almost too great to count. There is no doubt in my mind that Joe would be an excellent and deserving Carper recipient.

EDIT: I should also mention, insofar as Canada is integrated into the quizbowl community at large, that's Joe's doing too. He was one of the first Canadians to be active on cross-regional sets and community discussion. He's been a bridge and in many ways has made the broader quizbowl world more welcoming for many of us.

[Ewan MacAulay]

Sneaking in just before the deadline, I will re-up Edmund Dickinson for a Carper nomination.

Everything the Brits said in the equivalent thread last year remains true - Edmund would be the most deserving winner of a Carper from this side of the Atlantic. For basically a decade his writing, editing and organisational work kept the British circuit afloat, and without his and Kyle Haddad-Fonda's efforts in the early 2010s it's unlikely that UK quizbowl would exist in the way it does today.