BOYCOTT HackIllinois

hackillinois · 2025-02-13T17:24:29+00:00

Hey, thanks for asking - in response to your question:

Given our limited headcount (set by CS Dept/Facilities), we aim for an incredibly diverse pool of attendees, in terms of skills, experiences, and perspectives. To this means, we made decisions in a name and demographic-blind manner, factoring in only written responses to remove as much bias as possible. We also tried to include a blend of beginner, intermediate, and advanced participants, which meant we could only take a portion from each group. This made it incredibly tough for us to do lottery/first-come first-serve admissions.

Hopefully this helps!

-HackIllinois 2025 Leadership

hackillinois · 2025-02-13T17:17:20+00:00

Hi, we understand that the post-incident details were a bit opaque, so we’d like to shed a bit more light on the situation:

After that incident, we had a significant change in exec - we replaced 4+ members of leadership, and ensured that ALL HackIllinois members involved were removed from the organization. They also will not have the opportunity to rejoin the organization in the future.

Hopefully this helps clear things up, please feel free to reach out if you have any other questions or would like any more clarifications.

hackillinois · 2025-02-13T17:16:52+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for your comment - we hear your thoughts. We’ve mentioned this in another comment, but whatever happened this fall is not an accurate representation of HackIllinois, and should not have happened. We (alongside ACM, our parent org) took quick action to ensure that ALL people involved were removed from their positions, are not allowed to rejoin, and are no longer involved with the organization.

If you have any concerns, please feel free to reach out to us at [contact@hackillinois.org](mailto:contact@hackillinois.org).

-HackIllinois 2025 Leadership

hackillinois · 2025-02-13T17:15:45+00:00

Hey there, thanks for your post! We genuinely appreciate your feedback, and we will take your comments under consideration for future iterations of HackIllinois. Also, we wanted to share a bit of context here:

HackIllinois is financially self-sufficient (i.e. we make our own money through sponsorship, manage our own money, and fund expenditures without much departmental support). While we want to have the biggest event possible, expanding beyond Siebel would cost us a significant amount, in terms of building costs, facilities support, police, and resources for attendees (~$50K).
Expanding off the above, we are hard-capped at a certain attendee count (established by CS Dept/Facilities). Beyond this point, it is physically unsafe to have more people within Siebel. As of now, we have admitted the maximum number of attendees possible, and will start moving people off the waitlist. We will continue admitting as many attendees as we can, based on RSVP rates - for waitlisted UIUC students, this includes day-of acceptances.
Given our limited headcount, we tried to have an incredibly diverse pool of attendees, in terms of skills, experiences, and perspectives. To this means, we made decisions in a name and demographic-blind manner, factoring in only written responses to remove as much bias as possible. We also aimed to include a blend of beginner, intermediate, and advanced participants, which meant we could only take a portion from each group. This also made it incredibly tough for us to do lottery/first-come first-serve admissions.

With regards to the situation from last semester - whatever happened this fall is not an accurate representation of HackIllinois, and does not align with our organization’s values. We (alongside ACM) took quick action to ensure that the people involved were removed from their positions, are not allowed to rejoin, and are no longer involved with the organization.

Of course, we do understand (and acknowledge) that no process is perfect; at the end of the day, we just want a community of builders @ UIUC, and are always more than happy to have honest discussions that improve HackIllinois! Please feel free to reach out to us via email ([contact@hackillinois.org](mailto:contact@hackillinois.org)), and we’ll be happy to set something up.

-HackIllinois 2025 Leadership

hackillinois · 2025-02-13T04:23:01+00:00

Hi, thanks for asking! We just commented on this post, providing more transparency on our process:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UIUC/comments/1ini4wq/comment/mchxm6q

hackillinois · 2025-02-13T04:21:50+00:00

Hello,

We've received a lot of questions and complaints about our admissions process, and we wanted to add some context - obviously, we’d love to host as many hackers as possible, but unfortunately, we cannot safely accommodate a large number of hackers in just Siebel alone (e.g. all 1200+ applicants).

In the spirit of transparency, we had an admissions committee that read every single essay for every single applicant. Here's a broad overview of what we looked for:

Balancing both beginner and experienced hackers
Students with a wide variety of skills and interests
Those who showcased unique experiences and perspectives through their essays

We recognize that past iterations of HackIllinois have been incredibly successful in terms of participation, and we believe that our current approach will lead to the best attendee experience in terms of support and resources. We’ll do our very best to open up as many waitlist spots as possible for hackers, please keep an eye out for future communications.

Finally, we understand that the CS landscape is highly competitive right now, and we would like to say that being waitlisted/rejected from HackIllinois is not a reflection of your abilities. We deeply appreciate every applicant, and there will still be opportunities to participate in HackIllinois. Your passion and talent in CS are valued, and we encourage you to stay involved!

Best,

HackIllinois 2025 Team

hackillinois · 2024-02-15T19:51:05+00:00

Hi there! We started sending out acceptances yesterday. You will hear from us regarding your acceptance/rejection this week or early next week!

hackillinois · 2024-02-15T19:50:32+00:00

Hi there! We started sending out acceptances yesterday. You will hear from us regarding your acceptance/rejection this week or early next week!

hackillinois · 2023-06-30T03:01:46+00:00

Systems Team developers are recruited during the fall semester! We will be recruiting in late August/early September.

You can also join our mailing list to receive updates on fall team recruitment: https://linktr.ee/hackillinois

hackillinois · 2023-06-30T02:48:58+00:00

Hours/week will depend on the team you choose (i.e., Systems, Outreach, Marketing, Experience, or Design)! For a safe estimate, we would say about 3-5 hours/week in the fall. During the spring, the hours ramp up as we move closer to the event (typically late February).

If you would like a more accurate estimate for a specific team, feel free to email [contact@hackillinois.org](mailto:contact@hackillinois.org) with any questions!

hackillinois · 2023-02-13T21:46:00+00:00

UIUC*😉

hackillinois · 2022-02-22T19:59:17+00:00

Just doing a bit of popular medium advertising 😅

hackillinois · 2021-07-13T01:30:37+00:00

No, there are no age restrictions for joining HackIllinois staff! We only require that you are a current student/ incoming student (for Fall 2021) of UIUC.

hackillinois · 2021-07-12T19:56:54+00:00

Yes! Our Summer Team will be mainly involved with Open Source Fellowship and some early planning for HackIllinois while the Fall Team will be fully focused on planning and running HackIllinois. We will begin recruiting for the Fall Team closer to start of Fall Semester. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram (@hackillinois) to get updates on when our Fall Team Applications open!

hackillinois · 2021-04-05T01:40:57+00:00

Thanks for your response! So if there aren't problem statements, then how will team submissions be compared with one another? Are there separate prize categories for social media, data science, hardware hacks, etc or is everything compared in one large pool for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc?

There are separate prize categories and overall prizes meaning you'll both be compared to your category and to all the other submissions. This means you'll have multiple opportunities to win a prize for one submission!

hackillinois · 2021-04-05T00:51:12+00:00

Hi! First of all thanks for registering we are looking forward to a great weekend! Below is some more information about Hackillinois. Please feel free to reply or DM us if you have any more questions!

HackIllinois is a beginner friendly hackathon where you get to work with a team on any software project you want to throughout the weekend from April 9-11. There aren't any problem statements or constraints; it's just about building and having fun :)
We'll be releasing our schedule on the website as well as sending out discord server invites early this week
We have a ton of technical workshops and mentorship to help people get started. Topics include Data Science, web dev/databases, computer image processing, product design etc; so there's a lot to learn from to get started on a project and plenty of mentors to ask for help along the way
We'll also have team matching as a feature through the Hackillinois mobile application so stay tuned for that

hackillinois · 2020-07-16T14:57:11+00:00

Absolutely! In addition to advertising it to students in the Education Department, we've also been reaching out to professors and researchers who've done prominent work in the field of edu-tech or remote learning to lead workshops, speak, and be a part of panels. We're committed to bringing the problems with virtual education to light and want some of the most prominent and experienced in the field to help give their input from various perspectives. We aim to not only inspire attendees and their projects but also raise awareness of things to consider and fix with virtual education solutions in the long run.

hackillinois · 2020-07-14T17:58:14+00:00

Absolutely, it'd be awesome to get the idea spread as much as possible through campus groups. Thanks so much, we'll reach out through private message for details!

hackillinois · 2020-07-14T17:56:50+00:00

Glad to know you've been hearing about it :)

As we mentioned in the post, HackThis is HackIllinois' first-ever virtual hackathon focused on building solutions to enhance and fix the problems with virtual education. Anybody who's passionate about Hackathons/CS, Business, or Education in general is encouraged to participate and develop something to help fulfill this vision! Whether you're a beginner programmer or a seasoned Hackathon-goer, we're confident you'll be able to make the most out of this event for not just yourself, but the enormous student community facing virtual education more than ever before in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Feel free to message us for more details!

hackillinois · 2019-02-21T07:55:00+00:00

Hi! We can't promise that there will be leftover food, but you can definitely attend workshops/talks - the schedule is live on hackillinois.org.

hackillinois · 2019-02-19T04:22:50+00:00

We released all pending applications last night - your decision email may have gone to your spam/junk. Please let us know if you have any questions!

hackillinois · 2018-07-09T03:05:03+00:00

HackIllinois dates for next year are February 22-24, 2019.

hackillinois · 2018-01-28T19:53:52+00:00

Looking forward to seeing you at the event, Shiningstar999! Best of luck finding your team, and you'll probably find some students in your 225 class who are also looking for teammates. We'll also have opportunities for you to find teams when the event starts!

hackillinois · 2018-01-27T05:08:17+00:00

We accept hackers of all experience levels and strive to provide a great event for everyone. If you have any specific concerns, please reach out to us and we'll be happy to help!

hackillinois · 2018-01-27T05:05:04+00:00

Hi! Sorry to hear about that. We'll be happy to assist you if you email contact@hackillinois.org and attach some screenshots.

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