As one of the undergraduates that you claim to represent, Nick, I personally resent the implication that we are too weak to write packets and compete against powerful graduate students. I am in a somewhat similar situation to you in that as a sophomore I am one of the oldest active members of my team. My co-president (also a sophomore) and I have to be the substantial writers and editors of all packets that our team writes, and it's hard. If you want to talk about a relative dearth of tournaments we can certainly use the southwest as an example. Without ACF Fall there are three academic tournaments being held in this region this fall. The first two are both planning on using high school NAQT questions, which to some extent will be good for incoming freshmen, and the third is a mirror of Chris Frankel's Kickboxer classic tournament being held at UT for which my co-president and I had to write the region's packet. We could have used high school questions for our Kickboxer mirror instead of going to the trouble of writing a packet, but instead we chose to write the packet. By doing so not only did we learn from the question writing but also saved the substantial amount of money NAQT questions would have cost us. I'd also like to note that your team (Penn A) converted more of the available points at SNEWT (a packet sub tourney) than at Brandeis, which used high school questions. My team was unable to qualify for the NAQT ICT last year, and would have been shamed at ACF nationals. You can say that my position is one of an amateur, and maybe it is, but I do know for sure that your implication that as undergraduates the members of my team are either incapable or unwilling to do the work necessary to better themselves is unfair, and if I were one of your freshmen I would want the chance to prove myself in the real thing. -Eric Kwartler Co-President, UT-Austin qb UT Austin class of 2007
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