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Rights and Responsibilities of Contest Hosts
Hosting organizations and Site Coordinators who fail to follow mathleague.org rules pertaining to hosting of contests may be subject to sanctions including loss of the privilege of hosting future contests.
- Approval: All organizations wishing to host a contest must submit a request at http://mathleague.org/hostform.php and designate a preferred date to host the contest as well as a Site Coordinator who will serve as the agent of the organization. By requesting to host a contest, the organization and the Site Coordinator agree to indemnify mathleague.org from any liability arising from their failure to follow the rules as posted on this website. Site coordinators are asked on the hosting form to indicate whether the contest is independent, MCTM-sponsored or Mathleague Southern Africa-sponsored. As a prospective site coordinator, you will know if you are eligible to be MCTM-sponsored or Mathleague Southern Africa-sponsored; if not, you should register to hold an independent contest. We also offer a corporate contest option, where mathleague.org takes primary responsibility for the contest and handles finances directly, as opposed to the model where independent contests pay a licensing fee to use the tests and collect their own entry fees at the contests. Site coordinators interested in finding out more about hosting a corporate contest should contact us for more details. Site coordinators who do not know the registration code should contact us before signing up to host a contest.
- Payment: Upon approval of an independent contest by mathleague.org (which takes effect at the time the contest is posted on the upcoming events section of the website), the Site Coordinator must send mathleague.org a payment of $50. If this payment is not received by mathleague.org before the date of the contest, the organization will be assessed a late fee equal to $10 per month until the balance is paid; furthermore, notwithstanding any posting to the upcoming events section, no organization will be approved to host a contest if it has an outstanding balance from a previous contest or if it has failed to submit a certification form or sprint rounds from a previous contest. At the conclusion of an independent contest, the Site Coordinator must send mathleague.org a payment equal to $1 times the number of participating students. Payments can be made via Paypal at this link, or via check by contacting mathleague.org for further instructions.
- Registering Schools: The Site Coordinator is free to set and collect entry fees for participation in the contest so long as, absent prior mathleague.org approval, every student is charged the same entry fee. For contests that are not corporate contests, mathleague.org agrees to waive all rights to entry fees collected at the contest arising as a result of the use of the tests or the names mathleague.org or Great Plains Math League in association with the contest. Site Coordinators may limit the total number of participants or the number of participants per school based on available space, but if this is necessary entries must be honored in the order they are received. The host school may not deny any school registration at a mathleague.org contest on the basis of size, location, reputation, or any means other than the order in which the registrations are received. mathleague.org has an online registration interface that we strongly encourage site coordinators to use; contact us for more details if you wish to use this system.
- Communication with Participating Schools: The Site Coordinator must convey to all participating schools that they are responsible for reading, understanding, and complying with mathleague.org's policies and procedures. This notice must occur by the start of the contest or one week after the school registers for the contest, whichever is earlier. This notice is automatically sent to schools that register through our online interface.
- Photocopying and Distributing Tests: The Site Coordinator may make a number of copies of each test and answer key equal to no more than twice the number of students participating. All written tests that are provided by mathleague.org must be offered at the contest without alteration and in exactly the format provided (note that the Countdown Round at middle school contests is not a written event; it is an optional event and can be presented in whatever format is appropriate so long as the Countdown Round is not supplemented by problems not provided by mathleague.org for that purpose). No student in attendance may be denied the opportunity to take any of the written tests for any reason other than the student's failure to arrive on time for the start of the test; in particular, this means two written events may not be scheduled at times that overlap, and students may participate in the team events even if they do not have a full team. At the conclusion of the tournament the Site Coordinator may distribute any leftover tests to the participating schools if desired, so long as they are notified that the tests remain the property of mathleague.org and may not be distributed outside their own schools. Under no circumstances may the Site Coordinator distribute electronic copies of the tests to anyone for any reason.
- Quality Control: Site Coordinators are encouraged to review the tests before the day of the tournament and report any key errors to mathleague.org as soon as possible. If there is a problem discovered the day of the tournament, the Site Coordinator should make every attempt to contact the Testwriting Committee Chair or Tim Sanders for a ruling. If this is not possible the Site Coordinator should use his or her best judgment to make a decision, keeping in mind that the appeals process will serve as a safety net to ensure that, if a Site Coordinator has to make such a ruling, he or she needn't worry about the decision adversely affecting students' chances to qualify for state. It is suggested that each tournament institute a viewing period where coaches can check their students' papers for grading or key errors before the results are announced.
- Reporting Results: The Site Coordinator must mail or email the Certification Form (found on the downloads page) to mathleague.org at the conclusion of the contest, along with photocopies or scans of all sprint round answer sheets used at the contest. The Site Coordinator is required to enter data from the contest onto the form provided by mathleague.org and to finalize results from the contest within one week of the contest. Any Site Coordinator not reporting scores by this method will be assessed an additional $50 processing fee to cover the labor cost of converting their results into standard mathleague.org format. In addition, sites that fail to provide sufficient data may be subject to sanctions as described at the top of this page. If for some reason a site does not have the appropriate technology to use the data entry interface or to make photocopies of the sprint answer sheets, the site coordinator must contact Tim Sanders at least a week prior to the tournament to work out an alternate arrangement.
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