Planning for This Year

[Chris Pai]

Hey BGS board game folks!

So, now that we're looking at another academic year with COVID still present and monkeypox on the rise, I figured I might as well not bother making any predictions as to when we might have another game night. Instead, I wanna ask y'all: how comfortable are you with the state of the world? Do you want to start having board game nights again?

The state of things, as I understand them, is that in many ways people are in full "return to normalcy"–mode about basically all of academic life. CHOP & Penn both are mask optional, communal eating is happening more often, and there are no hard requirements for social events with or without food. Obviously though, COVID isn't gone, so the advice remains "don't do buffet-style food at events." Unfortunately, I don't know how easily I could do catering if it's not buffet-style; pizza, soda, and beer are kind of the "staples" of game nights in my head, and also I just don't know who I would order from if it wasn't Zesto. As such, the way I see it, we can decide either to have or not have the board game night, and if we do have the game night we can decide either to have buffet-style food or no food at all.

I know a fair number of folks on this mailing list have graduated and moved on with their lives in the intervening ~2.5 years since we've had an event. For those of you who are still working through your PhD at this point though, or have managed to find their ways onto this mailing list during the pandemic (bravo to you), I've put together a straw poll for y'all to express yourself. Please vote here within the next week, and I'll try to make some decisions over the course of the next month: https://strawpoll.com/polls/2ayLWKQJeZ4

Thanks!

--Chris Pai

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