The Review Meet for BOSM 2019 was held on the 16th of October 2019 to give a platform for all parties involved in BOSM—sport captains, clubs, and departments—to explain the work that they did for the fest and voice any difficulties that were faced. Due to the absence of a quorum post the first roll-call, attendance had to be taken again, resulting in a 40-minute delay.
The meet began with the Sports Financial Committee announcing that HAS (Hindi Activities Society) and DVM have been added to the BOSM charter. They were added at the discretion of the CoSSAc last year, but since the charter was amended two years ago and a clause in the charter said that it could not be amended for two years following an amendment, they could not be formally added until the two year period expired. An amendment to this particular clause was raised this year, which proposed that instead of the entire charter, only the amended clause would be unamendable for two years. A representative from Audi Force also raised a motion, asking for his department to be included in the charter. Both of these motions passed.
Participation
Many captains called the Department of Publications and Correspondence (PCr) out for poor participation in their events. The athletics captain said that they were unable to conduct some of their events due to a lack of participation. He added that a sprinter of theirs won a gold medal in the javelin throw competition, highlighting the poor quality of the outstation competition. The PCr CoSSAcn, Damanjot Singh, explained that they had to reduce the participation this year due to constraints in the available accommodation. This was contested by the tennis and athletics captains, who said that sports like basketball suffered from an excess of teams and not a lack thereof, which led to scheduling woes for them. Damanjot also said that many outstation participants who take part in sports such as athletics and swimming also register for other sports, but refuse to turn up for one of the sports due to scheduling clashes, bringing down the participation. He announced that for the following iteration of BOSM, a special approval would have to be taken from PCr before any participant is allowed to register for multiple events.
To ensure that events do not get canceled next year due to lack of participation, PCr asked the captains to state both the number of teams they require to conduct a competitive event and the bare minimum participation that they require. They also said that they are exploring the possibility of increasing the prize money for sports like girl’s football to incentivise more teams to participate.
Valedictory Ceremony
The decision of BOSM Controls (BoCo) to shift the Valedictory Ceremony (ValD) from the Audi to Gym-G was also brought up. Raihan Riaz, the Controls CoSSAcn, said that ValD used to turn into a “shit-show” each year due to a lack of logistical coordination. Captains could be seen running between Gym-G and Audi, with many outstation participants having to wait for hours to collect their certificates. The change in the location this year was made to ensure that they have a smooth check-out process, ensuring that they catch their trains/buses back home on time. However, with many captains in support of shifting ValD back to the Audi, Raihan said that Controls would shift it back next year, albeit with a more streamlined running of the proceedings.
Inventory
Many teams raised concerns about delays in the arrival of sports inventory and in certain cases a complete lack of new inventory. The hockey captain complained that they still hadn’t received a goalkeeping kit, casting a cloud of uncertainty over their training regimen for the entirety of the upcoming year. He also said that the yellow balls that they received were useless since they are not visible after sunset due to their colour. The boys tennis captain said that tennis balls only arrived on the day of the tournament, which forced the team to practice with old balls which were in poor condition. He then asked for a system to be put in place such that inventory could be ordered mid-semester. The Joint Sports Secretaries (JSS) conceded that they had faced some delays from the vendor’s end. They asked the captains to forward their complaints regarding inventory to them, and said that they would be expedited to ensure that the teams do not face any further difficulty.
Sports Teams
Raihan accused to captain of the hockey team of trying to alter the structure of the tournament, which is pre-decided to ensure transparency for all parties involved. The captain said that the changes that he had suggested were mutually decided by the captains of all the teams playing. In spite of the clarification issued, Raihan announced that hockey would be one of the sports that the CoSSAc pays close attention to from next year, by monitoring schedules and seedings very closely.
Concerns about doping were raised by a member of the powerlifting team. He said that despite a college being blacklisted for doping a few years ago, students from their college were allowed to participate this year. Participants of this college were seen taking adrenaline shots to improve their performance, but no action was taken due to a lack of actionable evidence. Damanjot stated that the actions of senior batches of a college do not warrant a ban on the college for all successive editions of BOSM, especially in such a case where there is a lack of incriminating evidence. The CoSSAc said that since they do not have the resources to check for doping, they need more than circumstantial evidence to accuse a team of doping. They cannot simply rely on the word of the powerlifting team because they themselves are participants in the tournament and thus might hold a bias against certain teams.
The captain of the basketball team said that due to past complaints about poor refereeing, they had given their own list of referees to the JSS to contact. However, the referees that were called this time were not from that list, and complaints were raised about the referees making blatant errors. He also said that he had kept a cap on the number of participating teams, which was not respected. This was followed by a 15-minute back and forth between the captain and PCr about a miscommunication between both parties over whether a particular team had been confirmed to attend or not. The captain requested PCr to try to increase participation from technical institutes since a majority of teams that attend BOSM are from colleges that have a sports quota for their admission. PCr announced that it plans to start calling colleges from the even semester for the following BOSMs, which should help in getting more participation from technical institutions.
Clubs
The proceedings then moved onto discussing the work done by various clubs for this fest. CrAC was commended by the CoSSAc for the fixtures that they had put around campus. NSS was reprimanded by the CoSSAc for being kept completely in the dark about a second Chief Guest coming for Junoon. The CoSSAcn for BOSM Sponz, Amol Dalal, also said that the number of t-shirts sold for Junoon, a major avenue of revenue for the fest, fell from 1050 to 400. The coordinator for NSS said that they’d ensure that the designs are properly publicised before signings are conducted from next year. The CoSSAc thanked Gurukul for making the BOSM anthem at the last minute.
Lack of communication between Embryo and the CoSSAc led to the former confirming Tania Sachdev as the “Chief Guest” for the inauguration—rather than a “Guest of Honour”—while the Sports Council were still in the midst of pitching other eminent personalities to come as the Chief Guest. The CoSSAc said that to avoid this in the future, both Embryo and the CoSSAc would pitch personalities as “Guest of Honour” and would only decide on who would become the Chief Guest from amongst them towards the end. They also agreed to keep each other well informed about any leads that they have.
Departments
DoPy announced that they made over one lakh in revenue through snaps. While Raihan commended the design of the diary that they had made for the fest, he lamented that signings still have not been conducted to sell them. The representatives from DoPy said that they could not conduct signings post BOSM as signings for Oasis took up all the available slots. They added that since the design is not sports-centric, they plan on conducting multiple signings post-Oasis to clear off their inventory.
The Firewallz coordinator informed the gathering that there were some instances where outstation participants were allowed to play matches without checking their ID Cards. The CoSSAc requested all captains to make sure that this does not happen from next year. The DLE coordinator said that they had generated a revenue of 2.3 lakhs. Amol thanked DLE for getting a deal for them from Bingo. It was announced that the revenue raised this year from the Prof Shows was the highest ever for a BOSM, garnering a round of applause for the department.
The DVM coordinator, Divyam Goel, said that 809 participants paid through the payment portal that they had developed, with transactions amounting to 7.6 lakhs. They had also developed various other portals for Controls, RecNAcc, and PCr apart from making a website and the app for the fest. The BOSM app had 3200 downloads and 5.4 lakh worth of sales were done through it. Amol said that they faced a lot of issues with the app on Day 0 and that the representatives from DVM were not very responsive, leading to losses for them. While Divyam apologised for the time it took to get the app running, he said that they cannot pin all the losses on them, since the ID Card payment facility was also not working till 10 PM. He clarified that most of the issues with the app were due to the old phones that the vendors were using, forcing DVM to debug on the go. He further added that he had a lot of issues with how BOSM Sponz communicated with his department, claiming that Amol said, ‘DVM might be a major department in Oasis and APOGEE, but it’s not a major department in BOSM.’ Amol alleged that Divyam said that Food Stalls are not important for him, a statement that Divyam denied.
Coming to the CoSSAcn departments, Raihan said that they had streamlined and improved the logistics significantly this year. They handed out e-certificates for the first time such that participants could give proof to their respective colleges quicker. Damanjot thanked DVM, RecNAcc, BoCo, and Firewallz for all the help that they extended to them for the fest. Abhinav Singh, the RecNAcc CoSSAcn, said that despite the staff quarters being under renovation, they were able to push the number of participants that they could accommodate from 1010 to 1360. He requested a department to take over the responsibility of handing out mess coupons from them, saying that RecNAcc does not have the manpower to handle it. Amol revealed that they raised a total corporate sponsorship of 6.79 lakhs. Combined with all other sources of revenue, they raised a total of 16.12 lakhs. He said that they will try to conduct more sponsor based events in the future. The meet ended with Mayank Kulkarni, the Sports Secretary, thanking everyone for coming.