Our members expressed their confidence in the candidates that were running unopposed, and Lewis Rockwell has won the race for Vice President.
If you are interested in running for a BAA board position, we will be holding elections for VP, Treasurer, Communications, Teams Liaison (formerly known as Quartermaster), and Rolls Reporter next year. In the mean time, you can get involved with the BAA by joining a committee. Reach out to the committee chairs on Discord if you are interested.
The elected positions for next years BAA Board are:
This year we are holding regular elections for President, Secretary, Graphics Chair, and Information Services Manager. Additionally, we are holding a special election to fill a vacancy for Vice President. The responsibilities of the BAA Board and the election procedures are defined in the Bylaws and Constitution.
President
The President of the BAA is the most public facing position. The President interfaces with students, alumni and the university to promote buggy initiatives. This role requires diplomacy and eliminating all biases towards individuals or organizations. Important skills for the role are relationship development, negotiation, leadership, and project management. Time commitment is roughly 5 hours a week for most of the year, ramping up to 15-20 in the month leading into raceday.
Jeremy Tuttle
I’m running for re-election as President of the BAA because my heart is still in the work. Over the last year, the BAA has made huge strides, many of which I’ve already talked about in our newsletters. Most recently, I’m proud to have rallied and organized the volunteers required to not only make Bonus Raceday happen, but also make it memorable, special, and as close to a normal raceday in quality of coverage and amenities as possible. I am eager to continue leading the BAA for another two years, and once again, I ask and thank you all for your continued support.
Vice President
The Vice President assists the other officers in their projects, and coordinates with Sweepstakes as necessary. A good BAA VP candidate is someone who wants to improve Buggy, or Raceday, or the BAA in some way, and has some ideas for how to do it.
Ian McCullough
I love buggy! I’ve been to 29 consecutive Carnivals, without a miss. I’ve built a buggy (Jubatus). I’ve done essentially every job on a buggy team except drive and push. I have the time to dedicate, and I’d love to give back to the BAA. I’d like to give back more in the future too, but this VP vacancy feels like a good match for my present situation. I’m active on the Discord and vocal in the chute. I hope I can serve the buggy community.
Jacob Mohin
Excited to help the sport of buggy grow and evolve.
Lewis Rockwell
I am passionate about finding avenues to promote, strengthen, and improve the Sweepstakes tradition. As a student, I gained experience helping new/inexperienced teams build safe buggies, which is something I want to continue working on as an alumni. My skills, experience, and passion would add value to the BAA executive board.
Experience: SDC Head Mechanic (2024), pusher (Apex, SDC), built Lust, Paranoia, and Gluttony
Secretary
Listed in the BAA By-laws as the person to coordinate distribution of meeting minutes to general membership as well as handle and maintain the membership list in partnership with the Treasurer. The Secretary’s duties overlap with several other positions, providing support across the main functions of the BAA. The secretary’s diverse responsibilities provide a broad variety of opportunities.
Christian Lanuza
Hi, I’m Christian. I graduated in 2025 and served as the Chairman for PiKA Racing for the last three years but have been involved in Buggy since I walked onto campus in the fall of 2021. I am running for secretary to help the BAA and Buggy Community plan events, help things go smoothly, and to make Buggy a better sport. During my time at CMU I was the captain of varsity swim team, secretary for Pi Kappa Alpha for numerous semesters, and secretary for the Plaidvocates during my sophomore year. I have plenty of experience coordinating events, staying organized, and getting people to fill out Google Forms. I have a tremendous love for the sport and would like to continue supporting it as the BAA secretary.
Graphics Chair
The primary role of the Graphics Chair is to create the Raceday preview which can be done either with InDesign, Canva, or an equivalent software. This is a 15+ page digital document that BAA members get Tuesday or Wednesday before raceday. The Graphics Chair needs to work with multiple contributors to get a summary of the teams this year, an interview with an alumnus, a raceday prediction or two, and the schedule of events for Raceday. This time commitment is primarily in spring. The Graphics Chair’s secondary role is to put together merch for sale year round or for give away on raceday weekend.
Sam Connor
I have served as graphics chair for the BAA for the past two years. Using my expertise in design and merchandise production, I have been able to run multiple successful drop-shipping fundraiser campaigns, including for BAA tote bags and beanies, as well as redesign the timeless BAA Raceday shirts, introduce Schenley the Sheep, the newly-designed BAA mascot, and overhaul the graphics used for social media posts and Raceday events. If re-elected, I would continue to support the rest of the BAA team with graphics assistance and support BAA efforts by bringing merchandise to our community members via fundraisers, expanding the variety of items we can offer, and working to create graphics and support the needs of the social media and website team.
Information Services Manager
Previously known as the Webmaster, this position has been renamed to better represent its breadth of responsibility. The primary responsibilities of the ISM are leading the website subcommittee in ensuring that cmubuggy.org has correct and up to date information (Carnival events, rosters, Sweepstakes Bylaws, history data, etc.), maintaining the cmubuggy.org’s back-end code, managing the BAA’s information systems, and helping the BAA with technical tools as needed. The more interesting work revolves around updating the website to fit today’s standards and to be more useful to the Buggy community as a whole.
Rob Siemborski
It is my pleasure to have served as ISM (previously Webmaster) for the BAA over the last 2 years. If you don’t know me, as a student (98-03) I was both Chairman of W3VC, as well as involved in several buggy broadcasts with WRCT. As an alum, I’ve been continuously involved in various ways beyond my BAA officer role including the radio safety net, broadcast, and rolls reports.
During my previous term I completed the website redesign, resulting in an easier to navigate and more dynamic web site. I have also worked with students to directly integrate our data into the broadcast (most notably, via roster and leaderboard graphics). I’ve also reduced our hosting costs by about half through several different efforts.
In my next term, beyond the day to day operations and improvements and a general eye towards sustainability, there are two areas I want to focus on – The first is a long term solution for our ever-expanding video library to better serve our historians and video editors. The second is a more flexible approach to web site updates, as we found several limitations during this year’s extended and bonus raceday.
Finally – and to give you an idea of how I try to approach other issues that come to the BAA board – some thoughts on the parts of the BAA mission that resonate deeply with me. I strongly believe that the BAA should take a supporting/mentoring rather than leading role with current students in their effort to build and evolve sweepstakes – be that rule changes, the broadcast, or operational raceday issues. It is also very important to me that we both recognize and celebrate all forms of participation in sweepstakes, not only the visible competitive team members.
I hope to serve you for another term as ISM.
The Ballot
Thank you for your time and consideration. Please fill out your ballot here: https://cmubuggy.org/vote
Please complete this form if you would like to nominate someone for a board position. In particular, we are looking for more nominations for Vice President and Secretary. Nominations close tomorrow evening.
This year we are holding regular elections for President, Secretary, Graphics Chair, and Information Services Manager. Additionally, we are holding a special election to fill a vacancy for Vice President. BAA election procedures are outlined in the Bylaws and Constitution.
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Pittsburgh weather didn’t play kindly this year. Due to rain, most of the 2025 races were not able to be held on Carnival weekend, and for the first time since 1981, we had a “Bonus” Raceday the following weekend. Most of you reading this probably weren’t able to get to Pittsburgh to watch it though, so all you’ve seen of the Men’s and Women’s races were the results themselves, and maybe a little bit of video (along with audio) from the live stream.
Until now.
What you may not have realized is that while we weren’t live streaming it, we had 12 different cameras, plus a drone, filming the races from every angle. And now that we’ve had a chance to put it all together, we’ve released it into the world. All Raceday 2025 heats, including the 29 Heats from Bonus Raceday Saturday and Sunday, are now available on the cmubuggy YouTube channel. Go and watch (or rewatch) as the current students persevered and put together a tremendous 2 extra days of racing, featuring all of the excitement, including a couple of new angles that we haven’t really had before – and for the first time ever, in 4K!
Oh, and don’t stop there – the All Gender and Exhibition heats from Friday are up as well, along with the bonus awards ceremony for the Men’s and Women’s races.
And remember, if you’re a graduating senior, you can sign up to become a member of the BAA for free here.
HUGE shoutout to all of the students, faculty, alumni, and others who volunteered to help out and make Bonus Raceday a massive success. But in particular, a special shoutout to Tom Felmley, David Yang, Shannon Lee, Onyx Mayer, Nate Miller, Chloe Lin, Logan Watanabe, Aarya Batchu, Dillon Lareau, Chris Goode, Wade Gordon, Matt Gallabrese, Clarise Liu, and Raghu Venkatesh for operating the cameras over the weekend, Cassidy and the WRCT team for handling the audio on the course, and Sophie Halpern, Connor Hayes, Nate Klein, and Will Weiner for coming out to do the commentary and providing us with the only real eyes or ears that we had on the buggies in real time.
This year we are holding regular elections for President, Secretary, Graphics Chair, and Information Services Manager. Additionally, we are holding a special election to fill a vacancy for Vice President.
Please nominate any graduated CMU alumnus who has not already served 2 terms in the position. In particular, we are looking for nominations for Vice President and Secretary.
Nominees will have until May 22nd to accept either by completing this form with a self nomination, or by contacting a member of the election administrators. This years election administrators are Wade Gordon and Matt Gallabrese and can be contacted through the BAA Discord. Nominees are invited to contact the current election administrators and current board members if they have questions about the duties of a position.
The BAA board holds monthly meetings throughout the year, with increased frequency around Carnival. As an officer, attendance is not mandatory at every meeting so long as you continue to make an effort to support the mission and projects of the BAA and ensure that the duties of your position are fulfilled.
At the most recent Chairmen’s meeting, next year’s Sweepstakes committee was elected. Congratulations to the new committee!
Chair: Rebecca Dettmar (Fringe) Ass. Chair: Jasmine Zeng (Spirit) Safety Chair: Julia “Jazz” Liu (CIA)
The chairmen also voted on a number of rules changes, pending advisor approval. Some of them are simple improvements to wording, or updates to bring the rules up-to-date with current practices. Others are bigger changes to driver qualification requirements and disqualification penalties. We will post the fully updated rules document on our website as soon as it is available. For now, here’s a changelog for your perusal.
Rule Changes
Capes and Rolls
Capes location clarified
Robotic buggies added to language for capes and drops
Drops location formalized as being on the road, rather than the sidewalk, in line with current practice
New driver follow car observation ride requirement elaborated
Fall carryover rolls increased slightly for drivers with a large number of fall rolls
Veteran drivers may now complete their pass test for the year in the fall, after completing 8 rolls
Drivers must now complete their spring rolls requirements across a minimum of two days, one of which must not be during truck weekend
Sweepstakes
Added several appointed Sweepstakes roles to spread the workload— Finance, Assistant Safety, and Mechanical Safety
Operations Chair added as an elected role
MarComm renamed to Events & Broadcast Chair
Raceday
Start line is now described in reference to buildings other than the late Skibo Gym
King/Queen/Monarch of the Hill methodology and criteria formalized
Number of teams in women’s finals increased to 10 to match current practice
Reroll requirements updated to reflect current practices, specifically allowing rerolls when a driver stops due to a valid safety concern
DQs
The following infractions are now enforced with 6-second time penalties, rather than DQs:
5-second violations, where the buggy is at the line at the count of “5,” and any offenders are gone by “Ready”
Lane violations of one full wheel, but not the full buggy
False starts not deemed intentional or excessive (time penalty is 6 seconds, plus the amount of time early that the buggy started). Other entries in the heat may get a reroll.
Transition violations of one foot but not both feet
Pacing violations
Any other violations, including interference arising from any of the above violations, are still DQs, and many have been reworded to indicate this. In addition:
Three time penalties on an entry in a heat result in a DQ.
Time penalties are counted in finals seeding, but not future year seeding.
Time penalties do not carry forward. They only affect the result of the heat in which they’re incurred.
At long last, we have finished the 2025 races! While they were a week late and far from ordinary, the men’s and women’s races were a unique and special occasion. Congratulations to all the teams for simply making it this far and making it around the course, and of course, congratulations to this year’s victors, CIA and SDC.
I would like to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to all the BAA members, CMU staff, students, and other friends and alumni who came together at the last minute to make this production possible. With less than a week’s notice, at least fifty-five different volunteers signed up, showed up, stepped up to make these races happen. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it. Really and truly, thank you all.
If you’ve been following along, you saw and heard our makeshift broadcast over the weekend. What you may not know is that we had over a dozen video cameras recording around the course for the entirety of this weekend’s races. Over the coming months, we will be editing this footage into full coverage of every heat that was run. If you are interested in helping with this sizeable project, please reach out to a BAA Officer.
Early next month, look out for news about BAA elections. But for now, most of us need a post-raceday nap. Once again, thank you all for your continued support.
Due to the anticipated inclement weather, the decision has been made that we will not proceed with Sunday races.
As you all know, this does unfortunately mean that the Men’s and Women’s heats will not be racing this weekend. Instead, these heats will be scheduled to race next weekend (4/12 and 4/13) during the usual rolls timeslot (prior to 9 AM). Due to time constraints, the heat schedule and race format may be modified, with details forthcoming.
We know that this is extremely frustrating for everyone, but we’d like to remind everyone that it’s times like these where the community aspect of Buggy is most important. We’d like to commend the students for their composure and poise through these unprecedented times, and we encourage everyone to do the same.
With Men’s and Women’s heats scheduled for next week, we are also in dire need of volunteers to help make Bonus Raceday 2025 happen!If you plan to be in the Pittsburgh area next weekend, please take the time to give us a hand—although it sounds cheesy, it’s the truth that we will not be able to run the rest of these heats without help from you all.
A huge thank-you for all the alumni, students, and buggy fans who turned out this weekend! Although this was not the Raceday we would’ve liked to share with everyone, we look forward to seeing the rest of those exciting races next weekend!
