Poorly Run Event Stories

[PandaDevs]

The Food Science test got screwed up because it was incorrectly numbered, so the proctors told us to skip almost ten questions.

[snorrio]

Our regional competition forgot the entire state-highway map section for Road scholar. Also, the dynamic planet test was 90% natural disasters and 10% actual plate tectonics.

[vennowsah]

Okay, this just happened today. For Experimental Design, our proctor arrived ten minutes late, and when we entered the classroom, there were no materials at all. Everyone in the room had to walk over to the classroom next door where Division B Experimental Design was testing to get materials from them instead. They had one materials table, so about 20 students were attempting to squeeze in to one small corner of the room and get what they need, all while trying not to disturb the Div. B kids. We were also told to stop at the normal end time of the event, even though we were delayed for at least 10 minutes when waiting for the proctor to arrive.

From what I've heard, Write It Do It was quite poorly run as well, perhaps to an even greater extent. Apparently, one of the components of the structure was glued to the underside of another, but the builders of the event were not given any glue at all, providing no means for them to attach the two structures together. Everyone walked out of the classroom confused and thinking that they failed horribly. This also reminds me of my Write It Do It experience at Regionals two years ago. I was the writer, and the structure that I was given consisted of wooden popsicle sticks glued together (with what looked like a hot glue gun) in an extremely intricate way. However, my partner was only given masking tape that did not stick to the wood at all, making it extremely difficult to attach the minuscule components together correctly. Some people were still able to do well despite that, whereas we failed completely (structure kept falling apart). I wonder how students are able to complete their building when materials from the original structures were replaced.

[Zioly]

Yesterday at the Washington NW regionals, the bottle rocket ESs only had eggs halfway into the first block and got the WRONG TYPE! They were jumbo and messed up a lot of teams. I'm pretty sure those darn eggs cost me my 4th gold, but hey... 3 isn't bad... I'm trying not to hate, but they should definitely be more prepared in the future.

[NeilMehta]

In road scholar they didn't use real topo maps and gave everyone copies of zoomed in versions, and an attached map key that only corresponded to one of the maps. That REALLY messed up a lot of teams...

[astronerdmn]

Astro at MN state was the worst thing ever. I didn't even take it, but everyone knew how twisted it was.
Long story short, proctor was too lazy to write a test, so he stole rwayzataso's SSSS test. [I go to Wayzata by the way. And no, the proctor was not from our school.]
The ranks (obviously) got cancelled, but only after everyone took it. This was personally frustrating because Wayzata tends to do well in Astronomy, and I'm confident the two taking it could have placed well even with a test we didn't write. But what kind of proctor steals a test? Especially a publically available one? Written by a student that goes to a school in this state? Not only was this test written before the rules came out, so the DSOs weren't even up to date, but did it never occur that maybe people would have already taken this test? That people would spend lots of time studying, and that their effort is compromised once the event gets canceled?
Wind Power was pretty bad too, but I'm tired and and Astro was still hands down the worst.

Hey I was one of the competitors that took that test! It was so heart-breaking to realize that literally days of hard work went down the drain because of this. The saddest part was the few teams who wouldn't have downloaded this test and the answer key, they actually took the test. I feel really bad for them, and I feel especially bad for any freshmen who love Astronomy and are now discouraged. Worst part was that they didn't admit that they screwed up, just that "something weird happened" and that caused the cancellation. But from what I can tell, a lot of the MN state tournament was pretty weird this year.

But there's always next year!

[Chameleon02]

This was not the event sups fault completely, but 3 meters ahead of the finish tape for scrambler, there was a wall. This was at my recent invite. (The whole room was only like 15m wide). One unfortunate scrambler never stopped. That egg made a really nice cushion.

[freed2003]

At my regionals for wright stuff, after the team finished winding their coach came up and took 20 minutes explaing how to fly the plane to them. The proctors didn't even start the timer yet!
That team ended up winning...

[bernard]

At my regionals for wright stuff, after the team finished winding their coach came up and took 20 minutes explaing how to fly the plane to them. The proctors didn't even start the timer yet!
That team ended up winning...

By rule 4.b. that's a Competition Violation that should have ranked them in tier 2. At regionals, I always warn before penalties, and actually last year at regionals I didn't disqualify a team even when half their team was communicating with the competitors.

[freed2003]

In road scholar they didn't use real topo maps and gave everyone copies of zoomed in versions, and an attached map key that only corresponded to one of the maps. That REALLY messed up a lot of teams...

The same thing happened to me, the map didn't even have a scale or a legend(or really anything) on it.