Team forming at the University of San Francisco

[beffdom]

I'm in the process of getting a team together at USF. I've read over the guidelines for forming a team, fundraising, etc., but I was wondering, are there any teams out in California? And what are some tips in recruiting people?

EDIT: Okay, I'm really starting to run into issues over recruiting people and boosting membership. I need at least five people to sign on with me before my quizbowl team is recognized as an official club on campus. The trouble with that is, I'm not allowed to post any signs or posters on campus advertising my upcoming club, and I think my options for setting up a table in my university's dining hall are rather limited. I will look into possibly emailing the whole school, but I really don't want to it to come to that. Got any other ideas?

[Important Bird Area]

Welcome to the quizbowl community!

Berkeley and Stanford are the other currently active teams in the Bay Area. There's some chance of Berkeley hosting a spring tournament this year; if that happens, there will be an announcement in this forum.

[Tanay]

I'm team president at UC Berkeley. We're elated at the prospect of another team forming in the Bay Area. Personally, I'd love to help in any way possible; feel free to contact me with any questions.

[grapesmoker]

Awesome! What I wouldn't have given for an excuse to go to San Francisco to play quizbowl back in my Berkeley days.

[beffdom]

Yeah, I was pretty surprised when I figured that there were no college quiz bowl teams in San Francisco. I'm sure there were already existing ones that just became inactive, but I really hope to change that!

[beffdom]

I don't mean to spam my thread or anything like that, but after looking at the formal process in starting a club/organization at my university, I've come across a slew of problems:

1. I'm doing this by myself, which means I don't have the five people it takes to form an official club on campus. I can't post any posters or reserve any tables in my dining hall to publicize my upcoming club. What does one do in this situation?

2. Would quizbowl be considered academic, recreational/club sport, or leisure and hobby in nature?

3. Would my quizbowl team be affiliated with any national/regional organizations? Which ones?

The process for forming a club is long one (about three weeks if I do everything right).

[Important Bird Area]

1. I'm doing this by myself, which means I don't have the five people it takes to form an official club on campus. I can't post any posters or reserve any tables in my dining hall to publicize my upcoming club. What does one do in this situation?

You may have no option but to spread the word among your friends and classmates until you have five volunteers.

Would quizbowl be considered academic, recreational/club sport, or leisure and hobby in nature?

Of those choices, "academic" is probably the best.

Would my quizbowl team be affiliated with any national/regional organizations? Which ones?

You will want to play the tournaments organized by National Academic Quiz Tournaments and the Academic Competition Federation in 2012-13. It's unclear whether that rises to the level of an "affiliation" for your administration.

[Matt Weiner]

I'd also like to note that, while forming an official organization as soon as possible is a good idea, it is not necessary to wait until the process is complete to attend tournaments. You can show up with 1-4 people at any tournament and as long as you all go to USF you can play; they don't care if you're an official group yet or not. Most tournaments will even give you a discount on the entry fee if you are paying out-of-pocket because you can't officially fundraise yet.

[jmannor2]

I'd also like to note that, while forming an official organization as soon as possible is a good idea, it is not necessary to wait until the process is complete to attend tournaments. You can show up with 1-4 people at any tournament and as long as you all go to USF you can play; they don't care if you're an official group yet or not. Most tournaments will even give you a discount on the entry fee if you are paying out-of-pocket because you can't officially fundraise yet.

True. Auburn still isn't official yet, but we have attended just about every tournament within 6 hours of us since our conception at the beginning of the academic year. Hosts are generally more than welcome to cut costs down for teams paying out of pocket.

[Susan]

1. I'm doing this by myself, which means I don't have the five people it takes to form an official club on campus. I can't post any posters or reserve any tables in my dining hall to publicize my upcoming club. What does one do in this situation?

You may have no option but to spread the word among your friends and classmates until you have five volunteers.

You could also try posting on your school's Facebook page.

[Mike Bentley]

You can create a Facebook page for your club and then spend a modest amount of money (maybe $20-$30) to advertise it. This should get yet at least a few hits. You can filter based on things like "quizbowl" or "jeopardy" or "trivia" to get more refined results.

Even better is e-mailing department contacts and asking them to send a message about your club. These department contacts won't check that you're not a real student group and will forward your message along.

Finally, there are likely places on campus where you can post banners without having to be a student group. I'm sure your campus has plenty of places where there are ads for painting houses during the summer, studying abroad, etc. Just post where these people have already posted and you'll get at least some eye traffic.

[Black-throated Antshrike]

At least at Delaware, they just need 5 people on paper when you form the club; they don't actually have to be involved or ever show up, in case you can use this to get affiliated quicker and put up posters

[Crimson Rosella]

I'm team president at UC Berkeley. We're elated at the prospect of another team forming in the Bay Area. Personally, I'd love to help in any way possible; feel free to contact me with any questions.

I'm involved in leading the club at Stanford. I'd also like to express my excitement that you're interested in forming a club and hope you will let us know if there's anything we can do for you.

[beffdom]

Thanks, Jeff and Matt, I'll definitely look into doing that.

Susan, I did post on a few USF-affiliated facebook groups, but decided to shy away from that one because it's usually used for alumni and prospective student relations. Thanks for the suggestion.

Mike, I'll probably do all of those things, but I think first I shall send emails to a few department heads. I'm not sure how student leadership (the entity that approves clubs and organizations) would feel if I created a group and then posted it on their own facebook group. I dunno, I'm just scared of committing a few faux pas because there are so many different stages new clubs and organizations have to go through at my school (We go through a probation period after being approved, something about the club not being able to request certain things and our club's activity being monitored.)

Joe, I can't necessarily do that. The request form requires me to list three people that will be in charge of certain things (someone to schedule meetings each semester with student leadership, a few people are given access to certain rooms on campus through their ID card), so I don't think I can just ask my friends to sign up when they're not really going to commit.

And thank you, Joey.

Sorry if I'm coming off as whiny. I'm definitely taking everyone's suggestions and seeing how I can best suit them to my current situation. I don't care what this will take, but I will get an active quiz bowl team running at USF before I graduate!

[Crimson Rosella]

This is kind of a goofy idea, but is there a large public area where you can just sit down, plug in a buzzer, and play for an hour or two? Over the summer when we couldn't practice in our normal spot, we'd do this, and it'd regularly attract the interest of random folks nearby, who then would sometimes show up to practices later on. If you need a buzzer, we have one that I think I could convince the other folks at Stanford to let you borrow, at least for a little while.

EDIT: numbers are difficult to spell

[beffdom]

This is kind of a goofy idea, but is there a large public area where you can just sit down, plug in a buzzer, and play for an hour or two? Over the summer when we couldn't practice in our normal spot, we'd do this, and it'd regularly attract the interest of random folks nearby, who then would sometimes show up to practices later on. If you need a buzzer, we have two that I think I could convince the other folks at Stanford to let you borrow, at least for a little while.

That's a pretty terrific idea. I've already created a facebook event and invited about 100+ people that attend my school. I'm sure I'll get at least 10 people interested, and we can stage something like this. We have a student center that's pretty busy during lunch. Would you mind if I borrowed a buzzer? And I would probably only use it once and you'd get it back immediately.

[grapesmoker]

So, having done that whole "founding a club prior to official recognition," thing, what I would suggest is to take a folding table and chair if you have one, and just set up in a visible space. Don't let anyone give you shit about it; they likely won't care anyway. Hang a banner or poster off the side of the table and smile at people a lot. Eventually you'll get enough signatures to be able to get the formal recognition process off the ground.

[Auroni]

Hey, welcome to the boards and to the community. While Berkeley and Stanford are the active colleges in NorCal, us (UCSD), UCI, Caltech, Riverside, and Claremont are the present-day active SoCal teams. Sometimes ASU comes to SoCal events as well. We have hosted 3 college tournaments this year, with Berkeley and Stanford in various states of attendance. I realize that San Diego is a pretty long trip down for you guys, but if we host a novice tournament or ACF Fall next year, then we'd love to have you come down.

[nadph]

Just echoing the sentiment that it is awesome to see another collegiate quiz bowl team start up in the Bay Area, particularly one from a fellow Jesuit school. While I am obviously less of an authority than other voices in this thread, I would encourage you to go to any Bay Area tournaments hosted this semester or this summer even if it takes some time before you get club approval.

[nadph]

This is kind of a goofy idea, but is there a large public area where you can just sit down, plug in a buzzer, and play for an hour or two? Over the summer when we couldn't practice in our normal spot, we'd do this, and it'd regularly attract the interest of random folks nearby, who then would sometimes show up to practices later on. If you need a buzzer, we have two that I think I could convince the other folks at Stanford to let you borrow, at least for a little while.

That's a pretty terrific idea. I've already created a facebook event and invited about 100+ people that attend my school. I'm sure I'll get at least 10 people interested, and we can stage something like this. We have a student center that's pretty busy during lunch. Would you mind if I borrowed a buzzer? And I would probably only use it once and you'd get it back immediately.

Didn't notice this before, but this is a fantastic idea. Our school uses this (albeit in an open room rather than in a student center) to attract people during our yearly open house and it regularly draws interested people. One question, what question set are you using for this? Something like ACF Novice or perhaps a good high school set seems like it might work well (at our open house, we use middle school/high school novice questions, for example).

EDIT: by the way, can you post a link to the Facebook page for the event here? I'm curious to see what sort of response it's been getting.

[tiwonge]

1. I'm doing this by myself, which means I don't have the five people it takes to form an official club on campus. I can't post any posters or reserve any tables in my dining hall to publicize my upcoming club. What does one do in this situation?

It's also possible that you just get four friends to sign their names to the paperwork just so that you get access to resources. Once you do that, you can have an election to get real officers.

3. Would my quizbowl team be affiliated with any national/regional organizations? Which ones?

I'd say no. Affiliation, as I'd understand it, would mean that you're a local chapter of a national organizations. You're not NAQT-San Francisco or ACF-San Francisco. You attend tournaments that they might sponsor or be affiliated with, but the club is independent.

[nadph]

Any new information about this? I would highly recommend that any interested people from USF attend the UC-Berkeley site of the Minnesota Undergraduate Tournament, a highly-acclaimed undergraduate-level question set. It will be this Saturday (the 7th).