Manifestos can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LP8ZVnyQPdpToK99zirg8z3sYIpUbX-i?usp=sharing
Ishita Hans
Q: Regarding the public platform to collect crowd-sourced pieces, isn't this what literaryartsitid is? What is the difference?
A: The blog literaryarts was introduced for a multitude of purposes, including but not limited to creative and journalistic pieces by the crowd, blogging, etc. Currently, the visibility of the blog is very limited, with most people unaware of its existence. This includes making the people aware of the platform, their opportunities around the platform, and improving viewership.
Q: Inclusion of bsp members in hostel rep team - what does this mean and how is this different from what is already being done? BSP members are not selected/elected at hostel level so I don't think you can officially include them in BHM constitution.
A: Inclusion of hostel rep team simply refers to activities that would help to facilitate easier orientation of BSP. One of the main issues we face every year is not enough visibility amongst freshers. This tackles the issue of introducing freshers to BSP as well as having someone in the hostel to directly contact and remove the gap between freshers and 'BSP members'. This would also help in a better marketing channel for our events and Literati and increase familiarity of the crowd with the board.
Maria Sandalwala
Q: Seeing your vision towards Inquirer, wouldn't it be even better to shift Inquirer articles completely from the website to Instagram? Definitely more number of people will read it and share their views through comments.
A: It's a good suggestion. I've seen that opinion articles like The Fault in Our Senate are very well suited to Instagram's format. However, journalistic articles in the flesh will be harder to incorporate on slides of 10, especially if they are thorough. What we can do is try to capture the essence of our article through graphs and snippets and then post them on Instagram.
Q: Do you think that having time-bound creative series will increase the quality of the posts?
A: From what I have observed, having a timeline makes things more focused and efficient. It also helps the team execute their ideas faster, thereby leaving members free to think of more projects to work on or to take a break before diving into a new one.
Muskaan Jain
Q: Do you think that people will actually use the IITD Internal Portal to discuss sensitive issues? Wouldn't asking for people's views through instagram stories/ google forms have a better outreach?
A: The portal will not only give us a platform to get people’s opinions on sensitive issues but also provide a space for BSP to post op eds and surveys which was not possible beforehand for some topics. The internal portal will open a set of possibilities that will allow BSP to cover important issues in a responsible way and engage with the IITD community for the same.
Q: You mentioned Elemental in your manifesto. Given that no Elemental has been released in the past two years, do you plan to reintroduce it in the same way or with some new vision?
A: Elemental was released in a piecewise format in the last year. The scientific articles were released along with the Inquirer articles to adapt to the online semester and increase readability. I plan to increase engagement through Elemental by incorporating the views of people with better knowledge about the topics and in turn increasing the overall quality of the articles.
Q: The next semester is anyways going to be online so it should be pretty easy to avoid clash with Convergenz. Literati may lose its identity if combined with Convergenz.
A: The issue is not only with clashes but the overlapping of the event types with Convergenz which leads to the reduction of participation from freshers. Literati’s identity comes from the literary events held which will not change. The aim of the collaboration is to mainly increase fresher footfall.
Raunaq Saraswat
Q: What metric will be used to determine BSP points for contribution to literaryartsiitd?
A: While the finer details can only be decided once the next team gets going, points awarded to a hostel will be contingent on the width and depth of contribution i.e. both the number of students and the number of entries per student.
Q: Is a bi-monthly newsletter feasible given the hectic IITD schedule and the fact that BSP released three inquirers in the last term after aiming for monthly releases?
A: It is. The proposed newsletter will differ from Inquirer in that it will not be a full-fledged magazine but a round-up of the recent events and a further build-up on the same to whatever extent possible.
Q: Why restrict the Inception anecdotes to just journalists? I am pretty sure you can target a more diverse audience by removing this restriction?
A: Sure, we can look forward to extending the pool of creators. Again, the editors-in-charge and the journalists will have to sit together and decide.
Q: Who will conduct the bsp team workshops? Professionals or ex-members of the board?
A: Latter, latter. We'd try to arrange either kind of sessions, however, the aims of a workshop will be better realized if they're facilitated by professionals of a domain.
Vyomesh Tewari
Q: Is it really a good idea to awards ECAs per project for participation? Doesn't having a single ECA for freelance correspondent already solve the problem of motivation?
A: Freelance correspondents are but one wing of BSP, meant to retain and attract talent that may otherwise not be up for full time BSP work. When we are looking at interview series dependent on casting a wide net (My Experiments with IITD, for example), we need the greater push to cover many more people. Also it can be a good incentive for people in second and first year, and maybe even in third year, to interview on their own and add to a series like Humans of IITD. BSP gives out much less ECAs as compared to other clubs and boards, and the increase in ECAs awarded is still not expected to push past a number reasonable with the returns.
Q: Regarding BSP hostel surveys, what data/information exactly are you aiming to collect?
A: The data is supposed to measure fundamental indicators of wellness: quality of food, hygiene, amount of sleep, physical activity etc. Splitting it into hostels is for convenience of analysis; greater goal is for BSP to have wellness data of the students of the institute in a way comparable over different semesters and years.
Q: Wouldn't it be better to organize the sensitization workshops for the whole campus itself instead of just BSP team (maybe in collab with bsw/nss)? No need to cover a problem if it doesn't exist in the first place.
A: Fair point, and I would agree if it was only a talk session for gender and caste sensitivity. However I plan on asking the person presenting to cover more specific domains too: how to write about these issues without unnecessary provocation, how to think about these issues in IIT Delhi context, how should our knowledge of these reflect in our interviews with people. These and more journalism specific angles are planned to be covered, which may not be of interest to the whole institute. Further having fewer people would allow for more interaction/cross questioning, and the resulting greater understanding is something that BSP journos as handlers of the student media body must have and display.