THE BITS HERALD THE DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM AND MEDIA AFFAIRS MARCH 2011 rrr ence Pree ea es TRY GE evi BITS-Pilani K.K.Birla~Goa Campus rr) een Cen eur) Ceoraaeeeet “Spreedom” With only Ta interrupting the festivities on campus, the jam-packed first half of the semester has probably left us alla little dazed The Spree organizers made little effort to build up public anticipation for the fest, fail- ing even to convince the rela- tively impressionable first- yearites to stay behind. The result - half-deserted hostels all through the four days of Spree. Thanks to the strong outsta- tion participation, we did wit- ness some nail biting matches and spectacular individual performances. Despite the much resented presence of certain sports quota colleges, the home teams held their ‘own, with BPGC bagging the Cricket trophy and the Girls’ Basketball team coming in Kudos to Pima Ra Cm nn ia ucay The usually desolate SAC lawns were transformed during Spree, thanks to add-ons like the shamianas, lights and cute sporting figures. Deserving spe- cial mention are the food stalls. No other festival has seen a worse range of food stalls. Gt Sor eoacuens Despite being the most low profile fest, Spree continues to hold its forte with its effervescent blend of zest, zing and zeal, Two of the stalls were none other than our messes churn: ing out the night canteen food at inflated rates. We are grate ful to the food coordinator for not having brought the anda pav stall and Nescafe as well Also, a welcome but low pro- file addition to Spree was the DoJMA Wall Blog, a less an noying (and definitely more in- formative) alternative to the second. Day 3 was definitely the most uneventful day of Spree 2011. And we admit The organizers looked on helplessly as the handful of teams completely ripped apart their clues. Kudos to the Purple Patch for the two match screen- LM-Spree texts, To sports lovers, Spree is and (very reluctantly) the DoJMA treasure hunt did little to seen ina very long time. raise excitement levels. ings, by far the best special nights our campus has will always be special. Now it just needs to be told to the “losers” who went home From the Editor’s quill The middle of March is a time of great flux. The tests loom menacingly in the horizon and the fests seem a distant memory. We cry out alternatingly for rain and inspiration, but we realize that the dog days of the se- mester are finally here. What better time then, to take stock of what we did, and what we should have done? How have we grown? These pages aim to do exactly that The 2007 batch continues to achieve. After acing the CAT, numerous BITSGians are now headed to the likes of Stanford and Carnegie Mellon for further study. What does this mean for the campus? We report on another great achievement, something very close to our hearts, the (planned) very first Convocation Ceremony in the history of the Institute (and all its campus- es), courtesy, the Goa Campus students. The placements, however, still appear not to have met expectations. CS un- dergrads bask in glory while other branches are nowhere to be seen. Talking about the fests, after their exponential growth in their initial years, Quark, Waves and Spree all appear to have reached a plateau. What happened? What needs to change? Finally, we bring you our CSA review, no words minced So here we are, with the fun part of the semester over, with the knowledge of the many ways in which we have grown Here's to hoping we continue the growth story, but in the right ways. Enjoy reading 1 hittp://www.bits-dojma.org/writedolma MARCH 2011 Graduation Calls Ate years of chasing that elusi jation ceremony at home is somet , after so many failed atten heard PA, anyone would say that 2 finally on the go romised to us for two consecutive years by the present student president (he had it in his agenda when he stood for gen sec) and this year by our current gen sec. The initiative was backed by the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of BITS. The Vice-Chancellor, an IIT graduate himself, where convocation is a tradition, was highly in favor of getting it started in BITS. What foll jes of meetings with the steering committee. This, the efforts of L-K.Maheshwari has pus! ombined v the idea out of hibernation DoJMA has learnt (duly cor firmed by the president) that the ceremony was put to a stop due to "India-Bangladesh war” in the ag70's. The happy news is that the present fourth yearites are going to get a proper graduation Ceremony next semester (the date is not yet finalized, but rumors suggest Septemb Ceca selves’ throwing high the ee aa Presentation blues ne of the major highlights of SPREE ‘22 was joubtedly the cricket final between BITS a, and SSN- Chennai, which eventually BITS, a went on to win by a close margin of 8 runs. However, the presentation ceremony which fo! lowed did not live up to the spirit of sportsman ship; Spree is suppo: uphold the tradition of sport. It started off with the felicitation of the chief quests, followed by a 30 min long po cut during which the crowds got rath Finally, th ceremony started and the aptains of the winning tean with the medals, It ended with a bang, by calling upon the victorious cricket team of BITS-G whereupon each member of the team was called forward to receive their medals, to thunderous applause and cheering, amidst Almost as an afterthought, the SVC football champions were unceremoniously (and rather en the medals ina bunch instead of being called individually. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they were all but shooed away after the team photo were presented clumsily, it must be said) ‘And then we complain of not getting enough outside participation for our festivals! Spree Finals Round up ON ee UU UR Ce One ucRe Me 9) uproar! More than 20 ans were then run. wards th ‘and_celebrat the victory of the hom eam in the most popy event of Spree 2023 Despairingly, @ few BIT: Goa teams, howeve jailed to deliver to the ex pectations of the crowd, ably the star which meant that. the finals of m nals otanince he events and also bagged quite a few wins by di games were played by commendable sportsmanship. At the Basketball Is against NIT, Trichy, the ga ‘ed, made them even lose ptibly though, they didn't ess efforts to stay modest or humbl n other sports, off-campus teams. Never neless, this did not make ne finals any less nai biting! pirit which the with dignity ntially put in vi after their tri Some active players and sport-fanatics in campus couldn't help but cry out loud against the injustice as SSN happens to have 2 sports quota, which gave them an upp mand and also some great national-level heir teams! Others, h o11 brought 5, zeal ring that it was, Ta and 72). It show: cased some memorable matches that actu: ally did the unthinkabl ur student and zing. (Especiall sandwiched http://www.bits-dojma.org/write 2MARCH 2011 by dol ma )» A lookback at the 3 FESToons WHS The one fest to really go 'BITSerk’, Waves was certainly found wanting in terms of star quotient (especially considering the rumours of Amir Khan's, ‘Arjun Rampal’s and Katrina Kaif's presence doing the rounds of the campus) as compared to its predecessors. This, however, did not seem to discourage out- station participants as this edition saw their numbers increase from an earlier 300 to a phenomenal 900 .While many do feel that Waves 2020 was a bit of @ iet-down in terms of sheer spectacle, it remains one of the best managed fes- tivals that the campus has seen in its short history with no major glitches or goof-ups during its course. While paintball had most of us locked in intense armed combat, the Waves Ball gave the opportunity to a fortunate few to im: merse themselves in a few precious moments of romantic bliss. The nights, featuring a shamelessly infatuated DJ accompanied by a shoddy rain dance ar- rangement, Shafqat Amanat Ali and the magical combo of TAAQ and Black- stratblues, atleast did their bit in living up to the well hyped theme of Viva La “ quark A whopping 7500 registrations, an astounding 50,000 hits on the official site in January alone (a major surprise considering its convoluted literature) and the towering boards of Dell Alienware placed at regular intervals around B-Dome seemed to indicate the birth of a phenomenon unlike any other this we had seen before. Few could have predicted the end result. With no informal events to speak of, overpriced food stalls and an endless chain of tedious events and workshops, Quark 2023 turned out to be a major disappointment. Both participants and campus residents preferred to stay indoors, or worse, seek their thrills elsewhere. Only the destructive monstrosity of RoboKombat and an enchanting performance by the Mime club managed to salvage some pride and generate a decent interest level among the people at large. To cap it off, a very promising TEDx, featuring an array of illustrious speakers from different spheres of life was scarred by the repeated erring of its not-so- charming host. Certainly, no parallels met here. \ the fest critique Once again, within not more than a month of Quark, an array of registrations and sponsors marked the oncoming of another major campus festival. Fortu nately, however Spree 2011 did not come crashing down like its technical counterpart. The inherent exhilaration accompanying intense, impassioned and nail biting sporting action is bound to make a success out of most major sporting festivals, and this was no exception. Interestingly, Spree saw the core committee doing away with the whole infamous system of food coupons, much to the disappointment of many free-loaders in important positions. While the special nights found themselves struggling to live up to the ‘special’ in their name, the live screenings of the India- England classic and the Chel- sea-Manchester United Premier League clash hit right on the spot when it came to creating the atmosphere befitting a sports fest. The matches, which were not as one sided as last year to the spectator’s delight, also helped. Side- kick attractions like the Zapak Alienware gaming lounge and the workshops also ended up adding that extra zing to the overall flavour of Spree. ‘D THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Ceca) Cire mete Rae Ceaeatr eM ed Ta TT hnically, it was just BPGC for them ced Psp) Ree a eyes eet) fee ee ea eae Tr Peer ceieod Pena Court(!), and who Cee int Sey Gupta of ‘the 2005 batch. ca 5 Cer ace tA Sa ue FL m9 May it aaa ee Eons 3 http://www. bits-dojma.org/writedol man MARCH 2011 CS.A. Review @ Disclaimer: the facts and opinions paraphrased here are solely that of the CSA members, and are true to the best of our knowledge. Aditya Chintawar already occupies a prime pedestal in the brief yet turbulent history of this campus. He has since been the architect of many a change, chief amongst those being the abolition of the infamous 11.30 rule. Today, as he nears the end of his tenure, one can safely say that being at the helm of affairs at the CSA wasn’t nearly as easy a ride as the tasks of the Gen Sec for Chintawar. When asked to list his biggest achievements as President, Chintawar immediately began with the “ERC room”. Next, he mentions the increase in efficiency of the festival coordination committees in ensuring better managed and more productive fests (no “major deficits” incurred) as a major step forward. In spite of this, a significant part of his manifesto remains unfulfilled. One sees no sign President | °f2"v new stationary shops or food outlets, prices in the Shopping Complex remain virtually the same and the highly anticipated and built up CSA website still remains in its primary stages. And, to top it all, no meeting of the general body has been called since the CSA’s incep- tion. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming on the part of the President, at least as far as his agenda goes, is his failure to intro- duce a monthly activity report from all elected representatives to the general body - although in this regard, one must ask what the hostel representatives were doing when they were supposed to send in their reports. Evidently, it does not speak too much for a CSA which promised more transparency, better interaction and no excuses. Another thing that has happened in his tenure is the institution of the convocation ceremony. However, he admits that the process had begun much before his time and “takes zero credit for it”. The fact that it will happen this year sym- bolises the culmination of many years of hard work put in by a lot of other people, although this CSA has also chipped in. On the other hand, a notable achievement is the institution of the ERP system. This 7.5 crore project, already inked with Wipro, which is to be implemented in all three campuses, aims to simplify all student activities and formalities to one touch. From entry and exit at the gate, to the issue of complaints or even certain components of registration, this, system promises to simplify it all. When completed, BITS Pilani would become the largest fully ERP-enabled University in Asia. Quite clearly, several major issues haven't been addressed and we are not too far from where we started off this aca- demic year. In such cases one readily points the finger at the people in charge, the elected representatives. But as Chintawar rightly points out, no member of the general body has ever approached him to put forth an opinion or criti- cize his activities in any sort of way. Hostel representatives seem to have no motivation for carrying out their duties ef- ficiently, thereby disrupting the whole chain of student welfare activity. Sadly, a mail sent out by the President to second and third year students, asking them to post queries or complaints regarding PS allotments received only 26 responses, even though the issue was pertinent to all. Finally, he finishes off by saying that a dedicated CSA team has, been his backbone as far as a lot of his endeavours are concerned Mourya Krishna says being a part of the CSA as well as on the organizing commit- tee of the three fests of our campus was a great experience. When asked about his ac- complishments, he is proud about the spread-out schedule of Slam and IYCN. Character- izing the outstation participation as “good",he blames Indiafest for poor in-campus par- ticipation in Quark. According to him, the large number of events was also a problem. Many of his campaign promises seem to have turned out to be unfeasible. The fees for UPSC coaching classes were too high, he said. Moreover, as only 50 people responded to the notice, the demand was deemed too less. Vice president ‘Another campaign promise was the setting up of websites for “various organizations” in the campus. In spite of the website templates being ready, the content is still on its way and actually setting up the server will not happen any- time soon, he opined. We felt it was strange that the templates were “finished” first, considering finished templates are readily available free of cost, on open-source platforms. He has also realized that the mess blog wasn’t a “great idea” as the mess committee is doing a good job. The rosy promises of guitar instructors and separate rooms for clubs perished into oblivion a lot sooner than one expected. But the vice president has to be credited with the reinvigora- tion of our very own “zephyr”, which was literally brought back from the ashes. https jwww. bits-dojma re/write iMARCH 2011 M we dian't actually overspend our budget. The allocation simply fell short of our expenditure. ID Keith Da I, the past few weeks, there has been intense speculation over the financial state and the no-show of budgets of the festivals. To put these matters to rest, DoJMA interviewed Chaparala Sri Vijay, the treasurer for the CSA. Excerpts from the interview: BITS Herald: $0 tell us, how has been the year so far as the treasurer? Treasurer: To put in one word, a great experience. To be the head of a whole department, Treasurer | the whole campus, isa diferent experience in itself. To deal with ego clashes, coordinat- r ing with the faculty and outsiders and finally managing to pull it all off ~ no other feeling like that. BH: How has been your experience working with the other CSA members? ‘Trex: This is the best CSA team ever, Chintawar has been a true leader, always at the fore-front of things. The Vice- President has been extremely supportive and motivationalsupporting number of initiatives on the campus. The Gen Sec has done his bit 25 well. Although, I need to say, there is a sort of disconnect between the student representatives (the hostel ones and the mess committee) and us, the senior core. BH: When you are talking about ego clashes, whom are you referring to? The CSA? ‘Trex: No, not the CSA was talking about the coordination committees for the various festivals, the various depart- ment heads and senior members, that way. I feel it is prevalent almost everywhere in the campus. BH: Okay, coming to your core work during the fetivals..the question that everybody's asking - why haven't the festival budgets been released yet? Also, the prizes haven't been distributed yet. ‘Trez: | can promise you they will be out before this month end, the closing of the financial year, couple of things to iron out. For Waves, the ledger is still not closed due to that episode with Myantra - we had to send back the initial batch of grey t-shirts due to poor quality. We are now negotiating a reduced price for the t-shirts, a sort of a penalty you can say, for not delivering quality on time. Regarding Quark, we have had issues with sponsors not giving us the money the promised "yet, Mahindra needs to cough up ‘around 5 lacs, GSL and others also owe us some money, so we can’t close the Quark ledger as we Regarding the prizes, we didn’t get the money/goodies on time. Ideally, the sponsors are supposed to carry their sponsors| H cheques to the festival - but that’s obviously not happening. We do sign a MoU, but it’s not legally bind- ing, Also, the faculty (Chief Finance Officer), | should say, hasn't been as helpful as | would have preferred ~ but to e fair, it isn't really his fault either. Ae The general buzz in the campus is that the festivals have not been as profitable as we would have wished. Is it 50 ez: Firstly, we don’t organize festivals for making a profit out of them. Secondly, no, we are not going to have a def- icit in Waves/Quark/Spree, lam confident they will break even. We think we have performed our best, and have done a better job than the last year’s treasurer and his team. This year, DOFAM/DOSM have been much cleaner and more transparent than the last time around. BH: And there’s also this issue about the food stalls during the festivals, that they have been largely overpriced... Trez: Yes, | do know about that ~ | have received complaints about that. it goes like this ~we have been charging the food stalls a 15% commission rate, so probably they have raised the prices to maintain their profit margin. So in Spree, we decided to charge the food stalls a flat rate of Rs. 6000 per stall BH: Coming to your biggest agenda/promise on manifesto, the smart card? You seemed very upbeat about its roll- out, but so far, there has been no word. ‘Trez: We have not been able to stick to the timeline ~ only now | have put together a team to program software for this smartcard which will be, on a pilot basis, be used for the night-canteens in both the messes. However, we have had trouble convincing the retailers like Borkars to accept the smartcard, as that would entail getting the money only at the month-ends. So yeah, at this stage, it will be difficult to comment on its utility ~ it is just a small step now. Let’s see how it plays out. W renever you speak to our amusingly benign General Secretary (Aniketh Reddy) with a perpetual smile on his face, it’s very hard to escape the feeling of being in a utopian world. But then there is always reality to give you a kick by the back side. His agenda had promised a sea of changes - and while he has tried his utmost to translate some of them to action, the rest have met a premature death. Although B a he points out with a genial swagger that he has succeeded in meeting the aim Gen. Sec. of coping with the frantic rush in library during exams by throwing the top floor ‘open, there’s been a lot left to be desired . You knew that the IPL style dugouts on his agenda was always for mere posterity. The shopping Complex prices remain as they are - no reforms, as was promised. His plan of setting up sensors to reduce water wastage was nipped in the bud by the CSA, but it really has to be attributed toa lack of persistence. And another very striking aspect is that there has been no individual accomplishment on his part. Most of his endeavors have been united efforts of the CSA. And to finish off on an ‘aal iz well note, the Gen Sec says, “I have given my 100 % and done whatever was possible”. But sometimes a cherubie facade and a perennial grin can’t puta lid on a tenure that has been at times marked by incom- petence. 5 http://www. bits-dojma.org/writeMARCH 2011 SO FGF SO GOOG... Placements have always been the ubiquitous yardstick believed to speak volumes about any institute of higher education in our country. Of late, admissions to universities abroad and internships have also jumped into the bandwagon. With just a couple of months more left for the end of the academic year, we shed some light on where BITS Pilani, KK Birla Goa campus stands. While placements on campus this year haven't picked up as much as expected, there are a few who secured job offers from top com- PLACEMENT | panies through off campus recruitment. While Computer Science Room and IS dominated the placement scenario on campus with a ma- D pease jority of recruitment companies hailing from the IT sector, Chemi. cal Engineering Graduates had relatively little to choose from, with Mechanical Engineers faring a shade better. While EEE and Eni students had the option of applying to most of the IT compa- nies in addition to core Electronics companies, fact remains that the candidates selected were, quite naturally, overwhelmingly from CS or IS. NVIDIA Graphics, looking to recruit students from EEE and Enl, had one of the highest pay packages in addition to a CGPA cut off of 8.0. However, last semester, they recruited just one undergraduate student, who has also received acceptance letters from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University. Apart from technology and engineering companies like Google, CISCO, Yahoo, TATA Motors, Sun Microsystems, BPCL and Renault-Nis- san, jobs in the marketing and financial sectors were up for grabs too’ with the likes of Wells Fargo and Absolute Data recruiting across all disciplines. Infosys has gone on a massive recruitment spree akin to last year (hiring more than a hundred). Overall pay packages from different companies ranged from around 3 to more than 20 lakhs per annum While current third yearites have started planning for their PS and some plan to pursue internships abroad with a list of destinations featuring NTU Singapore, Florence, DAAD Germany , besides the hallowed MITACS, Canada. Not to be left behind, many BITSGians graduating this year have made it to universities abroad to continue their studies. With multiple admits to Stanford, Purdue and CMS among others, BITSGians are making their presence felt. While all the figures for this semester aren't out yet, about three each have made it to UIUC and USC, and at least ten have received admission let- ters from Carnegie Mellon. Apart from universities in the US, some have also secured admissions in University of Southampton and EPFL, Switzerland S fees Receipt please! 1 cenos Spree sandy for fash ee hve As per sources, though Foodkhoj, BhookBhagao and other associated businesses have acquired per- mission to run on campus, there is no system of issuing receipts for orders. While there is no doubt that these services are a boon, the CSA believes that these profits should be accounted for. The sale of hard drives for which receipts are being issued has been quoted as a model and students are re- quested to insist on bills the next time they order. 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