The Department of Publications and Correspondence—often abbreviated as PCr—plays a crucial role in BOSM. 

The department has three major responsibilities during BOSM – correspondence, reprography, and designing. Besides this, PCr also organises the snaps for the fest. The department also handles confirmations, payments and registrations from teams leading up to the fest. Their work under the reprography area involves getting designed and printed any and all material that might be required, such as passports, ID cards, and posters. Correspondence involves getting participation from various colleges, the work for which is laid out a long time before the fest commences; first and second years in the department start looking for new leads and build a database of colleges and sports academies to call during the summer break itself.

In addition, PCr also reaches out to teams that participated in previous editions of BOSM to get feedback on how to improve the fest and/or invite them to the fest again. This strategy of review calling, according to Damanjot, the current PCr CoSSAcn, works quite well, given how about eighty percent of the college teams this year have participated in BOSM previously.

While most of their work is done before the fest, PCr still remains the first point of contact for all outstation contingents while they are on campus, and has the job of redirecting them to the concerned departments and clubs for whatever issues they face.

This year at BOSM, two new sports—ultimate frisbee and bodybuilding—have been introduced. While bodybuilding has received a decent number of participants, getting participants for ultimate frisbee has been a challenge. In addition, the number of participants has also been brought down from 1550 to 1400 this year, owing to accommodation issues faced by many teams last year. To compensate for this, the registration fees has been increased by a hundred rupees per team member to a total of 1200 rupees.

With regard to participation, Damanjot mentioned that the IIT Delhi cohort—which used to send about a hundred students for eight to nine sports—has this year sent only about twenty to thirty people for a much smaller number of sports. This is because of accommodation problems faced by members from last year’s attending teams. Besides this, the total number of teams competing in sports such as football and basketball has also decreased. Colleges that form the major chunk of participation are Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), Amity University Gurugram, and Motilal Nehru College. Most of the participation for BOSM hails from the northern sports circuit, as travel is a major problem for many colleges in the south. While the event has also seen international participation in the past—Sri Lanka and the like—they have not been invited this year. This is because of feasibility issues, considering the prize money for BOSM often fails to match their travel costs.

Talking about the differences between working for BOSM and Oasis, Damanjot mentioned that while events in Oasis have more uniform participation, his team has to work much harder to get participation for events such as girls’ volleyball and taekwondo. This is in contrast with sports like basketball, where there is usually an excess in the number of teams applying to get in. In these cases, PCr usually consults the captains of the respective sport and then decides whether to approve a team’s registration for a sport. As a result, participation at BOSM tends to fluctuate a lot more than Oasis, and the list of outstation teams is normally finalized on day zero of the fest.

Talking about the department itself, Damanjot mentioned that while the overall structure and functioning of PCr hasn’t changed significantly in the past few years, there are a slew of changes that they’re trying to implement. These changes include the distribution of snaps and souvenirs for BOSM and Oasis to the odd semester so that the major work of the department is done in one semester. He also mentioned that his experience in the CoSSAc has been wonderful, and he has enjoyed working with the other departments to ensure the smooth functioning of the fest.

As the interview came to a close, Damanjot requested all BITSians to come out of their rooms and enjoy the fest, as they have worked hard to make BOSM a good experience for them. He pointed out that the number of non-sports events has been increased this year, with events like the Red Bull football league being put in place along with improvements to the overall ambiance of GymG and SAC during the fest.