Scheduling an interview with Abhishek Gupta, the CoStAAn of Paper Evaluation and Presentation, proved no easy task but that only goes to show how busy a CoStAAn is with less than a week left to the fest. With a cheerful disposition, winning smile and his interpersonal skills, the PEP CoStAAn sits down for an interview to discuss the nuances of APOGEE 2018’s organization and details about the same.

The Paper Evaluation and Presentation department has three primary verticals this fest: ThinkAgain, Papyrus Trails, and the paper presentation event. With a host of speakers attending, from Danielle Feinberg, Director of Photography at Pixar, to Vasu Primlani and the controversial Gurmehar Kaur, his department’s work has certainly not been easy. ‘Our department’s work involves a lot of coordination with other departments and even clubs – for example with PCr APOGEE on correspondence, to Controls and ADP for other things. ‘Our work is merely one interlocking piece in a larger puzzle set’, he clarifies.

When asked about what’s different this APOGEE, he grows more animated: ‘A perspective I share with the CoStAA is that the domain of the fest shouldn’t be restricted to gears and computers. Even though most events in APOGEE are related to mechanical components and coding competitions, that doesn’t reflect the true spirit of APOGEE. The fest is fundamentally about inculcating the spirit of thought, and to stimulate discussion on critical issues’. With many non-tech specialists invited to speak, including an entire panel on women empowerment this fest, the selection of speakers embodies this ideology more than anything.

The invitation of certain speakers to the women empowerment panel has been controversial, and Abhishek is scathing in his criticism of detractors. ‘We are not biased entities’, he firmly states. ‘My opinion is irrelevant, and my job is to provide a platform to people across the political spectrum. A qualifying criterion for the LitFest has been that the speaker must be an author of a book or a form of popular media, and everyone on the panel more than meets this criterion’ he emphatically claims.

Abhishek concludes the interview exhorting all BITSians to ‘wholeheartedly involve themselves in APOGEE’s events’. He believes the spirit of the fest is about learning to think critically about issues, and that talks during the fest could potentially be, ‘life-changing’.