My issues with Quizzing in BITSian festivals

Oasis, BITS Pilani’s cultural festival ended less than a week ago. This will also most probably be my last Oasis as a student on campus. Of the few firsts that took place this Oasis was me winning my first Oasis Quiz. The quiz itself was quite a spectacle. Only in BITS Pilani will one find 450 odd people sitting down in an auditorium at 11 in the night writing the prelims to a quiz which would go into the wee hours of the night.

We won the quiz on the last question, despite amassing a lead of 60 points after the first 2 rounds.

Also, all the 6 teams on stage were BITS teams.

And this directly brings us to the crux of the post. For the last 4-5 years, the quizzing in Oasis and Apogee(our tech fest) has been limited to BITSian participation. Few teams form other colleges attend the fest only for the sake of the quiz. Competitions dealing with the finer arts of dancing, treasure hunting and rocking your brains out receive far diverse participation (although quizzes receive far more participation that any other event). It’s a shame because there are around 2000 people coming to Oasis from other colleges.

Now this would be fine if it weren’t for a tiny issue of community engagement. With all the 6 teams on stage belonging to a single college the average BITSian who isn’t remotely interested in quizzing has no incentive to watch the event.

As it is, quizzing is very much an outsider’s sport and take away the element of rooting for your college and you’re left with a bunch of 70-80 odd people sitting in the front seats while the masses evacuate the auditorium (with a 1400 seating capacity).

I have seen this happening with other literary events too. The biggest problem with all this is that the team spirit is lost and it becomes more about who won the quiz rather than which college did he/she belong to. It irks me to notice that a bunch of 10 girls from Gargi or LSR can cheer and show more spirit than 4000 students on campus. Come to think of it, I hardly heard any cheers from the audience when BITS’ team came runners up in Rocktaves this year.

I have no doubts that BITSian quizzers are amongst the best in North India (I have attended and won/heard of others winning enough festivals to confirm that), and as a member of the quizzing society on campus it somehow makes me wonder if this lack of diverse participation is creating a hurdle for quizzing on campus to scale up.

Last year during the Brain of BITS finals, there were 5 Pilani boys on stage along with a 6th fella who came from the Dubai campus. He gave the eventual winner, a man known by the moniker or King (or King D or Ravishing Ravi if you aren’t into the whole brevity thing) very stiff competition. BOB too came down to the last question.

So what can be done about this?

One strategy is to keep a cap on the teams that make it through on stage from a particular college, but then the flaw in this system is that there is hardly any quality non BITSian participation in terms of quizzing during Oasis. So in the unlikely case of this being implemented, the quality of the event will go down drastically.

One reason for poor outside participation is because Oasis almost always clashes with one of the IIT fests and the cheap fellows that these IITians are just end up going to each others’ fest. DU too doesn’t turn up, I am aware of some pretty good folks in DCE/NSIT/Stephens. They just don’t come. Is it the 5 hours through rural yet picturesque Haryana that prevents them from coming? I don’t know.

Why doesn’t this happen with other events such as MUN? What is it with MUN and DU colleges? I am going to have a MUN inside a well in Jhunjhunu district and I am sure I will have 12th graders from DPS RK Puram ready to sign up and dive in, ready to speak on the foreign policies of Tanzania.

Mean while, if you’re a student from any other college and is remotely interested in Quizzing, do turn up for either Apogee or Oasis to take part in some awesome and tasty quizzes.

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