DECA sectionals were canceled Jan. 23 due to temperatures dropping below -25 degrees with windchill in the Chicagoland area, causing confusion and anger among the 190 DGN students competing. The Rosemont Convention Center was supposed to host roughly 2,200 students to compete for their spot at the state finals in March. Each school has a maximum number of 65 spots for state. Due to the limited number of spots, a new qualifying cluster exam has been implemented by DGN club sponsors. The exams were hosted Jan. 27 before and after school.
The cancellation, announced early Thursday afternoon, affected competitors who had been preparing for sectionals for months. The competition traditionally includes a roleplay and a cluster exam. In the roleplay, members take on the role of a business professional and are given a scenario that they must present to a judge. The cluster exam is a multiple choice test that assesses a person’s career knowledge in a specific field. Since the competition traditionally includes roleplay events and cluster exams, the decision changed the way the students were assessed.
“For the people who are not so analytical, and more expressive with their voice, this is a big deal because they will not get to show the stronger side of their competition,” DECA Vice President Ryan Enright said. “I think that these people are automatically put at a disadvantage because without being able to perform their roleplay skit, they are expected to take the cluster exam without demonstrating their stronger skills.”
It was ultimately the Illinois DECA association that canceled, with not enough schools being able to attend. Having previously been cleared to attend the competition by D99 Superintendent Dr. Hank Thiele, attempts to remediate became a priority. Club sponsors Larry Baca, Olivia Wojciak, and Brian Veit improvised quickly by spending 2 days making 7 cluster exams for students in order to meet the state qualifier submission deadline.
“We hosted two sets of cluster exams Jan. 27 to determine who we were going to take to state. It was a set of 50 questions that students had to answer in their clusters in 30 minutes,” Wojciak said. “The traditional cluster exam is usually 100 questions in 60 minutes, but for our purposes, we had to cut it in half.”
The cluster exams were made by Veit with guidance from the Illinois DECA association. When sectionals were first canceled, the association sent out resources to help club sponsors curate exams and introduce next steps. This was important as some schools have over the limited number of 65 students and needed a way to narrow down which members will qualify for state.
“The written test is very general knowledge,” Enright said. “Let’s say marketing, it would be very general marketing terms and performance indicators within marketing, but if you go to a role play and you show them your amazing skills and how you look them in the eye and establish good human connection.”
This is the first time something like this has occurred since COVID-19. However, DECA sponsors say the experience provided a familiar framework for navigating uncertainty. Drawing from past disruptions, the chapter was able to implement an alternative qualification process while still ensuring students had a path to advance to the state level.
”The implications of COVID-19 was also that there were no sectionals, so we did exactly what we’re doing now with making and issuing the tests. Even though there were many constraints, we still managed to make sure there were still state qualifiers and we ended up still having a good year,” Baca said.