BHSAT (Spring 2023) [old thread]

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touchpack
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BHSAT (Spring 2023) [old thread]

Post by touchpack »

This tournament has been renamed and reannounced; please see the new thread here.

We are excited to announce BHSAT (Ball So Hard Academic Tournament), a nationals-minus level open tournament produced by the BHSU team and to be mirrored in the spring of 2023.

The tournament will be jointly head-edited by Matthew Bollinger and Rob Carson, and will be subject edited as follows:

Matthew Bollinger (Euro Lit, Euro/Brit History, Music, Philosophy)
Billy Busse (Science)
Rob Carson (US/Brit Lit, Painting/Sculpture, Myth)
Auroni Gupta (World Lit, Other Fine Arts (Visual), Other Academic)
Dylan Minarik (Mixed/Other History, Other Fine Arts (Auditory), Computer Science)
Tejas Raje (US/World History, Current Events)
Ryan Rosenberg (Social Science, Geography)
Morgan Venkus (Religion, Pop Culture)

Alex Damisch and Andrew Wang will also be contributing as writers.

The set will consist of 14 packets of 22/22 regulation questions, adhering to the following distribution:

4/4 Literature
  • 1/1 US/Canada
  • 1/1 UK/Aus/NZ
  • 1/1 Euro (includes ancient)
  • 1/1 World
4/4 History
  • 1/1 American
  • 1/1 Pure European/British
  • 1/1 World
  • 1/1 Mixed/Other
4/4 Science
  • 1/1 Biology
  • .85/.85 Chemistry
  • .85/.85 Physics
  • 1.3/1.3 Other
3/3 Fine Arts
  • 1/1 Painting/Sculpture
  • 1/1 Music
  • 1/1 Other Fine Arts (.5/.5 visual, .5/.5 auditory)
2/2 Thought
  • 1/1 Social Science
  • 1/1 Philosophy
2/2 Religion and Mythology
  • 1/1 Religion
  • 1/1 Mythology
1/1 Other Academic/Mixed/Etc.
.5/.5 Geography
.5/.5 Current Events
1/1 Pop Culture

Set Vision:
Matt Bollinger wrote:The past few tournaments I’ve worked on have been ACF Nationals. Nats is meant to feel imposing, grand, and serious. While that tournament model has its place in deciding a national champion, I’d like this tournament to feel less severe. Where it’s zany and difficult, it should be zany and difficult in the service of being fun.

The tournaments I have in mind as models are 2010-2011 Minnesota Open and 2010/2015 VCU Open. Although the Minnesota and VCU Opens were written in very different styles, they both give out early buzzes and 30s much more liberally than Nationals. They also both have lots of questions that Nationals editors are sometimes hesitant to write. Minnesota Open often pitches you straight-down-the-middle tossups on upper-canon topics that have come up recently. VCU Open has lots of unthemed, generously-powermarked tossups on ACF Fall level answerlines.

I think especially for older writers, worrying too much about what’s come up in the past can be counterproductive and exhausting. I am hopeful that emulating the approaches above will make this more fun for both us and the players.
Rob Carson wrote:I heartily endorse this event or product.
Ultimately, we aim to produce the best BHSAT ever, and we look forward to seeing it played!
Billy Busse
University of Illinois, B.S. '14
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by Smuttynose Island »

How will this set's difficulty and philosophy compare to previous iterations of BHSAT?
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by knife emoji »

I get that this is supposed to be funny, y'all, I really do, but don't you think it's maybe potentially just a touch mean-spirited to rip on BHSAT—which in the last two years has notably been written and edited by a bunch of younger, largely inexperienced people—from your positions as well-respected members of the community? Granted, I'll be the first to make jokes about our inability to difficulty control, but as a bunch of people who've not worked on the set, why was this necessary? As far as I know, Yale's team wasn't even asked if they were intending to produce BHSAT this year, which seems like a sort of bare minimum ask before going through with this. Not to mention that this feels, above all else, like a dig at someone who is no longer part of this community and who hasn't had a role in whatever issues the last two BHSAT iterations may have had.
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by Whiter Hydra »

touchpack wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:23 pmUltimately, we aim to produce the best BHSAT ever, and we look forward to seeing it played!
Intentionally giving your tournament the same acronym as another long-running set is bad enough, but this punching down feels rather unnecessarily mean-spirited.
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by reindeer »

touchpack wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:23 pm Ultimately, we aim to produce the best BHSAT ever, and we look forward to seeing it played!
Yeah, I agree with Harry and everyone else who expressed this in the Discord: I don't/didn't go to Yale, but this seems pointlessly unkind to the past and, especially, present writers of the real BHSAT. I understand that there's an intended reference to BHSU and all, but why not pick literally any other set name and/or write a tournament announcement that isn't a dig at a bunch of much-less-experienced college students?
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Our intent wasn't to "rip on BHSAT", and we're sorry it came off that way! We chose the name in reference to CMST, which also shared its name with an existing but wildly different tournament, since BHSU-associated people had been joking since that tournament that if we produced a set we'd obviously call it "BHSAT". We certainly don't intend any ill will toward, or have any desire to impugn, current or past Yale teams.
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by t-bar »

Auks Ran Ova wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:37 pm We chose the name in reference to CMST, which also shared its name with an existing but wildly different tournament,
The Collaborative Middle School Tournament was long defunct when the open-level CMST set was played. The writers of this set have no reason to believe that there will not be a high school BHSAT 2023 set. I am led to understand that nobody involved with this project contacted the current Yale team to discuss this potentially confusing conflict of set names, which seems like an oversight.
Auks Ran Ova wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:37 pm We certainly don't intend any ill will toward, or have any desire to impugn, current or past Yale teams.
This claim strains credulity when this line, which several people have pointed out upthread, remains right there for all to see:
touchpack wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:23 pm Ultimately, we aim to produce the best BHSAT ever, and we look forward to seeing it played!
I'm mystified at the poor judgment displayed by many powerful, well-respected members of the community in apparently deciding that this is a good idea, and I hope they reconsider their choices.
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War »

The writers of this set have no reason to believe that there will not be a high school BHSAT 2023 set. I am led to understand that nobody involved with this project contacted the current Yale team to discuss this potentially confusing conflict of set names, which seems like an oversight.
Just to confirm, as the person who would most likely be head editing BHSAT 2023 and is currently head editing BHSAT 2022, I have every intention of it existing (and didn't know this tournament would share a name with it).
Daniel, Hunter College High School '19, Yale '23
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by CPiGuy »

Y'all are like, two years late to the "making fun of JR's inability to difficulty control" party.

In all seriousness, I trust that you didn't mean any harm, but now that the community has expressed its distate for this gag, please come up with a different name. Not only is it potentially confusing but it's just unkind to Yale.
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by reindeer »

I don’t want to belabor this point too much, since I hope that the “BHSAT” team is planning to change the name and is just still thinking about it behind the scenes. But this is still bothering me, and I want to try to explain why I think people are reacting so strongly.

Obviously the choice to name this tournament comes from a confluence of factors, like the long-standing BHSU team and the two CMSTs. Others have covered why those facts are not sufficient to excuse this decision, so I’m not going to re-tread that ground. Instead, I'll try to articulate some of the subtext that maybe we’re all less on the same page about.

As Stephen said, the set production team assembled here is composed of many powerful, well-respected members of the community. They are experienced writers and editors, and they’re role models for younger players. People look up to them. They certainly didn’t originate the “BHSAT is weird/too hard” meme, but by choosing to lean on it so heavily, they amplify it. That would be painful from anyone! But being a Community Pillar comes with extra responsibilities, including to not use your platform to hurt others.

Finally: the most recent BHSAT was extremely well-received. Complaints about BHSAT’s difficulty and content still float around in community discussions, but to my eyes they are most readily interpreted as veiled complaints about Jacob Reed. Trust me when I say that I understand the impulse. But he’s gone; he’s presumably never going to see this; he’s not the real recipient of the critique. Instead, the actual target is the current Yale team: a group of much younger*, much less famous writers who stepped up last year under intense pressure and produced the actual “best BHSAT ever”, without the help of the very experienced editor they were counting on. They aren’t responsible for Jacob’s faults, and they deserve better than to have some of the most influential editors in quizbowl making snide comments about their work in the service of an in-joke.

To be absolutely clear, I’m not suggesting that this set’s editors went into this post with the explicit goal of demeaning the current Yale team by making jokes at Jacob’s expense. But I do believe that’s the subtext here, and I know for certain that it magnifies the harm done. Regardless of their intent, I strongly urge this set’s production team to choose a new name (from the literally infinitely many words and non-words available to you), and to apologize to Hasna, Daniel Ma, and the rest of the BHSAT crew.

*by "much younger" I mean, for example, that BHSAT's current head editor is class of 2023 and was therefore in sixth grade in 2013 when BHSU was originated. I realize that age is difficult in online settings, but it's worth considering that a long-standing joke that seems obvious to you may actually be completely impenetrable to someone who experiences quizbowl in a very different context.
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

Hello,

After some deliberation, we’ve decided that the most appropriate course of action is to change the name. As you’ve observed, all of us are far removed from the high school game; thus, we’re only dimly aware of the reputation to which you’ve alluded. However, we recognize that intention can’t determine interpretation, so we’ll move forward with a different acronym.

We're currently mulling over a few different names, so we'll come up with a new one (and change the post title) in the next few days.
Matt Bollinger
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Re: BHSAT (Spring 2023)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

We have indeed changed the name, and to limit confusion have posted a new thread, which can be found here.
Rob Carson
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