What is the most pressing concern in college quizbowl today (2022 version)?

[AKKOLADE]

Four and a half years ago, Ryan Rosenberg ran this poll concerning the biggest issues in college quiz bowl.

I've retained the original choices from the first poll, adding what seems to be the most prominent issue that was omitted at the time - misconduct issues.

I believe the original poll allowed for multiple subjects to be chosen, so I decided to let you vote for three.

There's also an option to vote for an unlisted issue; if you do, please post it/them in this thread.

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

Coming from both my role in ACF and as someone who had to go through the finance hoops for a new club, I'd be happy to help anyone with questions about their finances and club management or making things work to attend ACF events. I'm always free over DM's here or my email is [email protected].

[CPiGuy]

I voted for "Lack of outreach to new clubs and HS players entering college" but think that the actual pressing issue here is something slightly different: namely, the *perception* of college quizbowl among HS players entering college differing substantially from the actual state of things. From what I can tell it seems that many high school players believe that college quizbowl is more competitive, high-pressure, and/or results-oriented than high school quizbowl. (This is not an unreasonable assumption, since it is true for many competitive interscholastic activities, such as most athletics.) In fact I think the opposite is true; while you obviously can devote a ton of time and effort to college quizbowl if you want, most college clubs will be more than happy to accept any new members and do not have mandatory practice attendance, study regimes, or anything of the sort. I think it would be useful to try to communicate this more effectively to high school quizbowlers who may be considering playing in college.

[reindeer]

I like this list, but I keep thinking that "identifying the current most pressing concern" is actually secondary to the greater question of our ability to solve it once identified. Many of these concerns are united in that they can be (and, arguably, would best be) addressed by top-down leadership from trusted institutions like ACF, NAQT, or the misconduct form representatives. Based on my limited experience in quizbowl leadership, the people in these leadership roles are well-intentioned and doing their best! There just simply are not enough resources (money, time, interested people) to do all the things that could or should be done. At the same time, there are many people who appear to want to work to improve college quizbowl, but who are outside the institutions that are best placed to do that work.

A more robust set of institutions could, for example:

• handle misconduct in ways that better generate and maintain public trust and high standards for behavior
• establish a stronger pipeline of editors for hard tournaments
• conduct wider-reaching outreach programs and provide more support for new teams
• model and enforce “professionalism” in whatever ways the community feels it is currently lacking
• actively support efforts to increase diversity in players, writers, and leadership

It is noteworthy that “misconduct” is a leading concern in the 2022 poll (behind first place by only 1 vote at the time of this post), but was not included on the list four years ago or even named in the ensuing discussion. It seems likely that the major concerns for college quizbowl in 2026 will include ones that we do not currently imagine. I see a robust infrastructure for leadership — one that brings people into decision-making processes, that matches problems with potential problem-solvers — as the way toward increasing our capacity to respond to existing and future issues.

[cchiego]

I like this list, but I keep thinking that "identifying the current most pressing concern" is actually secondary to the greater question of our ability to solve it once identified. Many of these concerns are united in that they can be (and, arguably, would best be) addressed by top-down leadership from trusted institutions like ACF, NAQT, or the misconduct form representatives. Based on my limited experience in quizbowl leadership, the people in these leadership roles are well-intentioned and doing their best! There just simply are not enough resources (money, time, interested people) to do all the things that could or should be done. At the same time, there are many people who appear to want to work to improve college quizbowl, but who are outside the institutions that are best placed to do that work.

A more robust set of institutions could, for example:

• handle misconduct in ways that better generate and maintain public trust and high standards for behavior
• establish a stronger pipeline of editors for hard tournaments
• conduct wider-reaching outreach programs and provide more support for new teams
• model and enforce “professionalism” in whatever ways the community feels it is currently lacking
• actively support efforts to increase diversity in players, writers, and leadership

It is noteworthy that “misconduct” is a leading concern in the 2022 poll (behind first place by only 1 vote at the time of this post), but was not included on the list four years ago or even named in the ensuing discussion. It seems likely that the major concerns for college quizbowl in 2026 will include ones that we do not currently imagine. I see a robust infrastructure for leadership — one that brings people into decision-making processes, that matches problems with potential problem-solvers — as the way toward increasing our capacity to respond to existing and future issues.

This is a great post. The catch with building institutions is that institutions with more capacity require more resources. This would then be at odds with the cost side of quizbowl and the financial issues mentioned (imagine the calls to BOYCOTT NAQT if NAQT raised fees by 50%), which I do think is a strength of quizbowl compared to other college extracurriculars. Stronger institutions can also often go outside of their initial purview, as CBI did in the past, to adopt onerous and restrictive regulations along with higher fees (see also the recent SKT China experiment). But it's definitely a good idea to think about ways in which specific institutions could be strengthened to address some of the most pressing issues identified here and I'm very glad to see Olivia's call to look for solutions.

Professionalism, for instance, seems like something that national orgs could help diffuse to regional orgs and teams by connecting established team leaders and veterans with new schools and by offering practical advice on challenges in recruiting and managing a team. I think it's pretty clear that the establishment of free question databases and the proliferation of online advice on studying for quizbowl has helped a lot of players; more of that on the team side of things, especially at the college level and directed to new teams and new club leaders, would be helpful. I also really like the idea of quizbowl organizations thinking beyond the next national towards potential future issues as well as finding ways to work opportunistically with non-members. I think those two actually go together quite nicely, in that longer-term thinking and plans (as well as broadcasting those publicly) could help with coordinating concrete action in the future.

Some of these issues though might be better addressed through changes in norms. It would be ideal if norms in quizbowl could reward mentoring new schools/players and helping more schools/players get involved, stay involved (e.g. not simply getting more teams to events one time where they have a poor experience), and improve (wherever they start from) just as much as rewarding things like PPG, Power Rate, national placements, and writing hard questions. There's some of this now, and a bit more than say 10 years ago, but how exactly to encourage this in a systematic way is hard and is much more difficult to measure than say PPG. Plus there are plenty of intervening variables here like geography, prestige, budget, etc. that make it even harder to see how effective any individual person or team is at these kinds of less-measurable factors. Perhaps this could be done more effectively at a circuit level (I'll make another plug here for regional, state, or local organizations and/or Discords) rather than expecting any one individual person or even team to do so.

Finally, my impression is that being a well-connected and/or "TOP PLAYER" allows one to avoid accountability for misconduct more easily, though as with all misconduct issues it's hard to tell for certain given the lack of a complete picture. It's not clear if new institutions would by themselves be able to address that problem, but discouraging the Cult of PPG and changing other social norms might.

[ryanrosenberg]

Finally, my impression is that being a well-connected and/or "TOP PLAYER" allows one to avoid accountability for misconduct more easily, though as with all misconduct issues it's hard to tell for certain given the lack of a complete picture. It's not clear if new institutions would by themselves be able to address that problem, but discouraging the Cult of PPG and changing other social norms might.

Now that I am no longer involved with any misconduct processes, I'd like to respond to this, because I think this view is a) fairly common, b) likely incorrect, and c) damaging to trust in community misconduct institutions (which then harms those institutions even further, because people don't report misconduct to institutions they don't trust).

I'll preface by saying that I do not have the full picture of misconduct in quizbowl, and I am not trying to make sweeping claims about what misconduct has occurred. Rather, I want to address the idea that well-connected players are treated more favorably by misconduct processes (because they're idolized for their playing prowess, they have friends in organizations, or otherwise). In my experience, both as a misconduct form representative and ACF president, the reverse is actually true: while I don't think the sanctioning procedure comes down harder on plugged-in players vs. non-plugged-in players, it is often easier to handle cases involving well-connected players because they have more interactions with people in quizbowl, there are more sources, etc. It is much, much easier for me to imagine someone on the fringes of the quizbowl community committing misconduct and flying under the radar, than it is for me to imagine a well-connected player avoiding official sanction for misconduct because they score a lot of points.