Class A

Class A is the student fair-fight hackathon. Eligibility is restricted to students or first-time hackers; pre-event project work is prohibited; and integrity mechanics — the published no-pre-event-work language, AI-attribution requirements, optional commit-history audits, a reporting channel, and a disqualification escalation path — apply to maintain the fair-fight commitment. The MLH-supported university season hackathons (HackMIT, PennApps, TreeHacks, Calhacks) are the paradigmatic Class A events, and MLH's standard rules language is the working template for what Class A looks like when implemented well. See no-ringers-without-disclosure and pre-event-work.

Class A events are not safer or more virtuous than Class B or Class C events; they are differently scoped. The class label exists so that participants can decide whether the event is the kind of event they want to enter, not so that organizers can signal moral superiority. A hackathon that has committed to Class A operations and fails to enforce the integrity mechanics — that publishes the rules but does not run the audits, or that operates the reporting channel but does not act on reports — is failing its participants in a particular way that the case study salesforce-1m-2013 illustrates concretely. See class-b and class-c for the other two classes.