2013 NAQT Cheating Scandal
The 2013 NAQT Cheating Scandal, dubbed Watkins-gate after its chief instigator Andy Watkins, was a scandal in which several members of the quizbowl community were discovered to have accessed questions for NAQT tournaments before they happened. In all cases, the accusees worked in some capacity for NAQT.
Andy Watkins
It was revealed in March 2013 that Andy Watkins had cheated at the 2009, 2010, and 2011 ICTs. The cheating was discovered during an NAQT inspection of computer logs in the wake of similar cheating by Joshua Alman, and the earlier cheating incident with Shantanu Jha.
Title Changes
- 2009 Undergraduate: Minnesota
- 2010 Division I: Chicago
- 2011 Undergraduate: Virginia Commonwealth
- 2011 Division I: Minnesota
Media Coverage
Unfortunately, the cheating incident was uncovered just a month after 125 Harvard students had been caught cheating on a take home test in an introductory government class, and happened to coincide with Harvard's upset victory over New Mexico in the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. The first report came from Insider Higher Education, followed closely by the Manhattan based blog Gawker, and then approximately twenty other newspapers and media outlets.
- "Veritossed" - the initial Insider Higher Ed article [1]
- "Epicenter of Evil"-the Gawker article [2]
- Harvard Crimson-feturing commentary (albeit very little) from Stephen Liu [3]
- Minneapolis Star-Tribune-featuring commentary from Andrew Hart and Mike Cheyne [4]
Links
Other Cheaters
In addition to Alman and Watkins, Joe Brosch and Scot Putzig were also discovered to have cheated at 2010 HSNCT and 2011 ICT respectively. Their wins were vacated and they were subsequently banned from future NAQT events.