The Boers Pamphlet: Unravelling the BOTC conspiracy

On the 28^th of February, the most important battle of the year took place. A fight in which our association separates the wheat from the chaff and where only the strongest committees survive: the BOTC. Our lovely board, Aether, organized a very special, monopoly themed, edition this year in which we needed to compete outdoors, visiting classic hotspots in Eindhoven. The goal was to visit and purchase as many hotspots as we could to win the game. Finding and visiting the hotspots was a piece of cake, the real challenge lay in gaining money. This could be done in two ways, either competing in challenges and mini-games or giving the lovely members of Aether some incentive to slip your committee a few more pieces of cash money. The rumors went that some committees came prepared and bought gifts for bribery purposes. At some point in the evening, I saw Trijntje with a packet of Maltesers and Arne with “Kneed en Klaar” hamburgers, from which I can only conclude that some briberies had taken place. Other committees had some shady, under the table, deals ready which I am, for legal purposes, not allowed to give further details about. (For the casual reader who has never participated in a BOTC, doing bribes and shady deals is all fair game and part of the standard regulated Intermate BOTC rules).

The evening went on and we all ended up in the Costa full of anticipation about which committee had the most points on the board. In the Costa I interviewed some committees. Especially the BorrelCie and CieKlusKlus/Intermania felt like they had the win in their pockets. Both committees played a strong pre-game and put all their efforts into sucking up to Aether which worked like a charm. But then... Timo came with the final verdict and to everybody’s disbelief the BorrelCie and CieKlusMania were not the top players in the game! InterTEAM and ProMoekCie were, and both got invited to compete in the final game, the “AdtEstafette”. Everybody was completely shaken and could not believe what just happened, this must be a joke, a complete farce! We needed to face reality when Timo chugged the first beer. When his empty glass touched the surface, the battle began. InterTEAM took an early lead and steadily chugged on while ProMoekCie struggled. They never stood a chance. The winner was announced, and it was once again interTEAM who took the crown. Everybody accepted it at the time, but it left a sour taste in our mouths. Something was going on... Why did InterTEAM, a committee who has no real talent or likability factor suddenly win the biggest contest of the year? After the event people began asking questions, some came with crazy conspiracies others begged for a recount. Nothing could be done to change the outcome. 

I, Morris Boers, took it upon myself to once and for all unravel this enormous mystery. I will do this by presenting you with hard scientific facts backed by lots and lots of evidence. 

The claim: There is a large far-reaching conspiracy, that includes both InterTEAM and Aether, to let interTEAM once again take a big fat “W” during the BOTC 2024. 

Piece of evidence #1: During GM #194 the following question by an audience member was asked: “In your professional opinion, which Intermate Committee is favourite for winning the BOTC this year?”. The first one who answered was Martijn who immediately, without hesitation, said InterTEAM. The rest of the board looked at him scared and I even saw Timo make a hushing sound towards Martijn. I think this was the moment where Martijn messed up and by accident revealed that the winner of the BOTC was already determined from the start. Trijntje and Arne tried doing damage control by stating that they have no favorites and that they are “still open to bribery”, but it was already too late. This argument can also be found in the minutes of GM #194, line 1306. Hmmmmm.. very interesting. 

Piece of evidence #2: During an interview with Thijn van Veggel about the events preceding the BOTC some questionable statements came to light. When asked if he had approached Aether before the BOTC he admitted that he had “done some preliminary work to sway Aether to inter TEAM’s side”. When I asked him to explain this statement and told him I was working on an article, he suddenly went silent and told me he did not want to comment any further. Hmmmm... very interesting.  

Piece of evidence #3: The last and most damning piece of evidence came to light when I asked Job to send me the score sheet of points obtained during the BOTC. Aether, very precisely, took note of the number of points won for each obtained street on the board and using some Excel magic calculated the final score. The final score for each committee can be found in Figure 1. 

Figure 1: Total final points of the BOTC 2024 of each committee 

As can be seen, the Borrel had the most points closely followed by the CieKlusMania. We can also observe that InterTEAM and ProMoekCie are nowhere to be seen in terms of points. Yet, these committees were invited to chug in the final adt estafette. This shows that even though their own made points system determined different winners, Aether still picked InterTEAM and ProMoekCie for the final. Hmmmm... very interesting.

Piece of evidence #4: Everyone knows that an adt estafette against the ProMoekCie will give you a good winning margin. If you were interTEAM you would want to adt against ProMoekCie which is probably also known to Aether. Hmmmm... very interesting.

Conclusion: After reviewing all the collected evidence only one conclusion can be drawn, Aether conspired together with InterTEAM to give them the BOTC “dub”. Especially piece of evidence #3 shows this... the preciseness of Aether has become their own downfall. Now that we know what really happened, I argue that given the circumstances Aether should disqualify both InterTEAM and ProMoekCie and reinstate the winner of the BOTC to the third place. The third place was won by the CieKlusMania after a gripping adt estafette againts the Borrel later on in the evening. CieKlusMania should thus be the legitimate winner of the BOTC 2024. Also to prevent any foul play in the future, I plead that we should give interTEAM the “sjaarszen treatment” for the coming five years during the BOTC. Hmmmm... very interesting.

If you have any more evidence supporting my claim, please send it to Area51InsiderAlert@tutanota.ru.