Understanding Rules Deviations

As IAC President I chair the Sanctioning Committee and am therefore responsible for granting Contest Directors permission to run IAC contests. As part of the sanctioning process, CDs are welcome to submit “Rules Deviations”. These deviations allow contests to run with a bit of creativity.

Rules Deviations are a very useful approach to try out a complicated new idea. As long as the deviation is approved and published in conformance with the rules, the contest can operate with some customization.

Whether or not I will approve a Rules Deviation depends on many factors, including safety, how the regional and national point series will be affected, the clarity with which the submitter has spelled out the deviation, and how the deviation would affect the image of the IAC. If a Contest Director submits a carefully worded and complete rule deviation that creates a fair environment for everyone, if they submit the deviation early enough that competitors can prepare, and the deviation won’t make us look bad or significantly increase the risk to competitors or people on the ground, it is likely to be granted. If I get a request that is vague, that calls for behavior that appears or is reckless, or that creates a playing field that isn’t level, I will deny it. I haven’t had cause to deny a request yet, proving once again that most people are perfectly reasonable.

The most common Rules Deviation request is to run a contest without boundary judges. This comes up a lot because some contests are short staffed or they operate out of airports where there is no way to access the boundary positions. I estimate that roughly half of our contests operate in this fashion, so you can see that this is a very common deviation request. I am encouraging the board to make boundary judges officially optional at our contests to spare me and our Contest Directors the trouble of using the sanctioning process for this trivial request.

There are other uses for Rules Deviations that are not quite so simple. At a recent contest, a CD wanted to skip the Free Program and run an additional Unknown Program instead. This requires some support from the Sequence Committee. There is a rule change proposal going before the board along these lines, to eliminate the Free Program entirely from the Advanced and Unlimited categories, so you can see how the process can be useful to give an idea like this a trial run. Without Rules Deviations we wouldn’t be able to test out these sorts of concepts.

Another contest wanted to provide an Unknown Program to the Sportsman category. This ended up being accomplished without a Rules Deviation at all, because someone cleverly realized that instead of creating an official Unknown they could provide competitors with an Unknown in the form of a Free Program. Those Sportsman competitors who wanted to flew this pseudo-Unknown as their Free, the rest flew the Free Program normally.

Our “Legacy” category is another example of a Rules Deviation. Sadly, this idea has not taken off very well, to the point where I don’t think it can be called viable any longer. But the good news is that we were able to try out this idea and give it a fair shot without introducing new language to the rule book or taking on the associated training burden. Rules Deviations are very useful for new category ideas because they allow refinement over several contests and they let us see how popular they will be. As IAC President I am practically overwhelmed by vocal proponents with conflicting ideas on how the category system should be restructured, so I’m grateful we have a mechanism that keeps me from being in the middle of these debates.

Contests have also used Rules Deviations in the past to fly CIVA-style Free Unknown programs without having to use the full CIVA rule set, which would be too complicated for a regional contest. They’ve also been used to add “Warm Up Figures” in the CIVA style for Advanced and Unlimited competitors. I recommend the board approve a change to add warm up figures to all regional contests for Advanced and Unlimited competitors. These enhance safety and are worth the time they take. But whether that change passes or not, Contest Directors have the option if they request it along with the sanction.

Note that I’m aware that some contest officials do not want to be bothered with thinking ahead and some feel free to make sudden off the cuff changes to the rules. Some even discourage protests, or shame competitors so they won’t buck against the local flavor. But this is not an acceptable way to run an IAC contest. Fairness is all about objective and open standards. Fairness is about taking time to do things the right way. Ultimately, as Sanction Chair I have the duty to pull the sanction from any contest that operates outside of the rules, so it is in everyone’s best interest to encourage that the rules are followed. Issues with sanctions can be brought to me and I’ll work through them as diplomatically as possible, but there should not be any issues if Contest Directors and juries understand the sanctioning process and work within the system instead of against it. If there is a rule that you do not like, remember that our Rules Chair is available to accept your rule change proposals. And I’m available as well to help you run a safe, fair, and joyful contest!

Please keep your comments coming to president@iac.org!