DOE CCC ed January, 2012 ésEDITORIAL The month of January is always a bit slow. It plays host to the unremarkable start of yet another semester, with almost nothing news-worthy happening. It is almost as this, month has followed a pre-written script — Painful registration? Check. Mess dishing out standard 5-star meals? Check. Hostel IPs changed? Check. Tendulkar getting his 100th ton? Cross. So far, annoyingly normal. What then, to look forward to? If only we can look beyond the drab ambience of January, we would see 2 fests up on schedule in quick succession ~ and there are entire teams of BITSians working extremely hard to ensure they are both resounding successes. In this issue, we bring you a glimpse of the campus tech-fest, Quark 2012, featuring interviews with the Quark convener, Pranay Agarwal, and workshops and guest lectures head Arpit Goyal. Also included is a sneak preview of the sports-fest, Spree, giving you a few details of what to expect from the 4-day sporting fest. If one would recall our election issue last year (August 2011), there were a whole lot of ambitious manifestoes colouring the pages. Today, for the CSA members, more than half of their tenures are over; and there is dissatisfaction from some quarters of the general body about the general lack of reforms on campus. This edition brings you interviews with the CSA members, with them explaining the work they have carried out since their appointment. Mind you, this is not meant to be a criticism of their efforts, it is just a measure of how much is left to be achieved before they remit office this April, report card or no report card. In other news, BITSians continue to bell the CAT with amazing regularity, with many scoring above 99 percentile, The placement scenario is slowly but steadily brightening; there is an article presenting an overview of statistics on both of the above in this issue. Keeping up with its new-found enthusiasm, CEL is organizing a conference Agora, while a Google conference/lecture is being hosted by the campus as part of Pre-Quark workshops, and Nirmaan is growing ever stronger with a string of events, the latest being its talk session/discussion Confluence; we have included information on these conferences in this newsletter. Dealing with the net of course, remains as painful as watching India play test cricket overseas. Though to be fair browsing speeds have gone up, one set of confusing rules has been replaced with another set of confusing rules (300MB, 2GB, browsing time limit, password, squid?), and the net randomly strikes work in some parts of the campus. We sincerely hope that the service becomes reliable soon. Strangely enough, some people this January had the grotesque idea of burning our Waves mascot, Papple, instead of allowing it to retire some place quiet like Marco the polar bear did —a despicable act lacking logic and common decency, insulting all the hard work Arts and Deco had put into it. We can but hope that the rest of the semester sees the flame of common sense bum a little brighter.electoral promises the honourable members have actually managed to act upon, straight from the horses’ mouths, as it were. Disclaimer: Again, this is in no way meant to be any unsound criticism of the CSA, and is only meant as a review for the general public and for the CSA. members themselves. President: Given that his was such a pleasant delight of an election manifesto, you were always going to be disappointed. Though Manoj Malineni immediately asserts he has fulfilled two of his most important promises - firstly, the completion of a 16 lakh project for the tennis court, which comes as a refreshing change, and secondly, extended timings for Ice n Spice have been realized, although it has hardly made a difference. A letdown as far as his agenda is concerned is the failure of the idea of placing all classrooms and LT’s under the purview of the CSA which would have made a lot of processes a very streamlined affair. One of the roadblocks he points out is the amount of leg work one has to go through before actual implementation takes place. There is a sense of pride when he says that Waves 2011 was one of the better organized festivals the campus has had. Apart from all this, one of his immediate goals in the next couple of months is to get the food court up and running. He says he has finalized the tender, but the slew of clearances required once again proves to be a major headache. Treasurer: Without prompting, Akshith Rao straightaway jumps to the issue of the Smart Card system, perhaps keeping in mind our previous fascination with the same. He claims that the software for the smart cards is almost ready, and is confident that the coding would be done by January-end, with trial runs slated for February. On another important point of his agenda, he has already contacted an IT firm for providing the online portal for transactions during the festivals, with the inaugural run being slated for BITSMUN during Quark 2012. The treasurer has managed to waive the down-payment for the said firm by promising advertisements and associated publicity while eking out a low commission rate for all transactions. The pleasantries done with, we turn to the proverbial elephant-in-room issue — the Waves Budget. It is with a sense of pride that he announces the festival will