Before this blows over, I'd like to clear up any confusion regarding this (and other) threads.
First of all, "tofutoaster" is an actual member of our team. He's competed in a History Bowl tournament and also attended HSNCT as a member of our B team. However, he prefers to go by
Tony, which is why no one has had success finding him in any stats.
I have reprimanded him in private repeatedly for making bad posts. Although his posts appear to be "troll", having known him for some time now, I truly believe that he just lacks self-control and a good concept of social conventions. I will talk to the admins about restricting his posting privileges to prevent anything of this sort happening in the future. I did originally discourage him from making an account, predicting that something of this sort would occur, but that failed.
I also want to comment on what other people have been saying about our team. We've only recently started competing in the "greater" quizbowl circuit. In previous years, our team has stuck to conference play, the IHSA state series, and the Masonic state series, but, thanks to interaction with good quizbowl advocates, we made a conscious decision this year to attend as many pyramidal tournaments as we could, something that our team has never done before. This new time commitment, along with a lack of upperclassmen for guidance/leadership, has lead to a schism in the club between those wishing to participate in pyramidal quizbowl and those who merely wish to stick the basics.
The "infighting" described in
this post does not have anything to do with the leadership position discussion in
this post. My teammate was describing a situation in which another teammate vulched a tossup, ostensibly to boost his stats(this was at one of the first tournaments we attended). We've since (mostly) rectified the vulching/stats issue. Regarding the other post, the "alienated member" has repeatedly described his desire for an A team and/or leadership position, but often refuses to attend tournaments or study due to being less motivated than the rest of us. He's also stated that the reason he wants those positions is to improve his college admissions chances. Needless to say, giving in to him would be a mistake.
Finally, I'd like to apologize for any harm that my team has done to others on these forums and other online quizbowl meeting places(IRC, qbwiki). I realize that our reputation is pretty bad, and I know that an apology will not solve all the annoyance that we've caused, but I hope that this will at least get us on the right track.