girls ?
 

ok .... obviously females are rather rare in our midst

[excluding PR and CHEERLEADERS and CLERICAL]

how many girls are there around the metal shop on weekends when the actual work gets done ?

surprisingly, last year, one to three girls were always present (out of 4 total). This year, we have lost those three (freshies in college:D) this year, we have a few girls from another school that seem to be pretty interested in robotics, and have shown up to all the meetings.

/me thinks there are too many threads about girls

Cory

i am *always* there. are you kidding? i *am* the robot ;)
naw, our team is actually majority female, and usually there are at least 6 girls in the room where the work is being done at a time. unfortunately, not all of them actually work :/

Meh
 

Currently we have two girls on our team; hopefully it'll stay that way till the end of the season...

It's hard enough to get -guys- to join our team...

One..
 

Hey all...

All we have is one girl.... It really stinks b/c it gets tiring being in a room full of other smelly guys!!

Anyhow,
!!

Our single female member is the only student machinist.

She kicks $@#$@#$@#.

More girls In robotics !!!
 

lol theres a huge shortage of girls in robotics admittingly across the board... but over here in 702 ville we have two Co captains and there both bright, smart, hard working girls doing there stuff and out shining the guys, and there are even other girls that have been working around the clock to get the bagel byte of 2003 up and running tho the guys have done most of the building with out them on the team I'm not sure wut would happen lol:p

and even our buddy team out here (Venice high) 861 has there team mostly of girls and there all learning and getting things done... if there was more girls in robotics then all the robots would be like WOW... :ahh:

and besides i don't wanna be stuck in a room for hours a day with just guys lol i think everyone can agree with me on that:D

Wow, people from other schools actually go to your meetings? That's weird...

We have four females on our team. Not one of them just does PR/clerical/"cheerleading". One girl is the lead of our programming team. One girl (me!) is the lead of our electrical team. One girl devotes her life to drive, and the other does animations. And every girl knows how to use the shop (though you'll usually only find ChellyZee in there.) All four of us are also part of the Tesla Engineering Charter School, which rocks! At the start of the season, we had eight girls ... but a lot of them dropped for various reasons. :( Oh well.

- Katie

This is because the other school will not let them have their own team, or so I am told, so they joined ours


Cory

Truck Town and Lady Thunder
 

hey all, well, our team 68, truck town, has 21 members, 10 of which are girls. so, we decided to start a new team, 998, and call it Lady Thunder. Our girls compete in the after season at invitationals with our other robot (we build two each year). Its pretty cool.

Dan, Alex, Denise, Der-Shing, and the Jeremys go to other schools and I've seen them around this year.

I believe we a bunch of girls...
our entire welding crew of 4 people is girls, you have me on the lathe, and the others doing other random jobs around the shop...

we have quite a few girls. most of them do the management stuff, but i'm trying to get them more involved in the building part. i think by the end of build they'll at least have tried some stuff. they all want to be drivers though, so that's a good thing (i think).

me agree

yeah, i'm one of the original girls on my team(sr.), and I get put on PR b/c i know the in's and out's (haha, rite)
but that doesn't mean I don't try to do other stuff too
most of our girls work w/ stuff to some extent.... some of them
tend to giggle a bit more ...

"girls, it's all i want is girls" by b-boys i think is a ap. song for this thread... ok, maybe only that part of it (sorry it just came on the radio)

103 Team Members
 

Cybersonics members are as follows for 2003
Male: 18
Female: 15
We have 5 student officers - 3 are female

Famale Role Breakdown:
1 - mechanical/scout
1 - electronics/head scout
1 - electronics/programming/scout
1 - Inventor Website Development/Manager
1 - PR/Strategy Coordinator
2 - Animation/scouts
1 - Animation/PR
2 - PR
1 - PR/Web Content/Scout
1 - PR/Fundraising
3 - PR/Fundraising/Scouts

-Why is the question asked to "exclude" those in PR?

We have numerous girls on our team.
And being that I am not only a mentor but a chaperone
YOU
CAN'T
HAVE
ANY
OF
THEM!!!



Go back to your room! :rolleyes:

He meant other schools as in other high school students interested in their robotics program, not previous visiting members from college. Plus, are you saying that Dan's a girl? =P

team 388 has always had a majority of females,
ex our first year we had 4 guys, and around 20 girls!!!:yikes:
the next year, about 7 or 8 guys and 12 or so girls.
this year is ALMOST half and half, but more of the girls have shown up to work than the guys.
:yikes:

Personally... while sheer numbers of girl look good to the affirmative action crowd... From a teenage boy standpoint- we need to do something to encourage the convergence of the robot geeks and the attractive members of the female subspecies. It may have been said by everyone once. But we should have cheerleaders. FIRST cheerleaders.

we did..
almost every one of our girls was a cheer leader, basket ball player, track runner, or just plain beautiful.
hehe... we had em alll!!!!
tho its because of the way our team works,
its part of an extra cirricular program that normally only the "brainy" kids get into, and those are usually the ones you described

Masamune:

It's not so weird. My brother and I are from Sweet Home High School, and we drive 45 miles to West Albany to go to meetings. Next year I will start a team in sweet home.

Virusmirusne:

I totally agree with you, however, though some girls are attractive it is best to get ones w/ attractive personalities. Both doesn't hurt, though. :D

Team 692 is called the Fembots. I'm sure you can figure out how many of us are girls. :p

Our team doubled in size in comparison to last year. It's awesome to see so many girls interested in this program!

A girl without a personality is like an aluminum box without a chiaphua.

It is nice to have girls on your team, but its not all about having some hot chick to stare at all the time. when you are around guys 24/7 during robotics, its nice to have girls in there to lets say even out the hormones. They are different than us, and fun to hang out with.

FIRST does not want to attract girls because they are hot, and because teenage guys like to stare at them. FIRST wants to attract girls, becuase typically, technology and engineering fields are filled by men. FIRST's goal is to get girls interested in science/technology/engineering who would not be exposed to these fields otherwise.

How do you think girls feel when they see that people want them on their teams simply because they are "hot"? I don't think that women are flattered by men who want them around, simpy because they are nice to look at. I would say that the vast majority of the girls involved in FIRST are not in it so they can recieve attention from us, but because they are interested in robotics, or want to learn about robotics.

To sum it all up:

It is very demeaning to only value girls because they are "hot" value them for who they are: people just like us who love robotics. There is a lot to be learned from each other.

Sorry ive been ranting for so long, but I feel this is important:cool:

Cory

Very well said. I always find it offensive when someone says that their team needs more attractive females. It's perfectly fine to be attracted to good looking people, but being chauvinistically disrespectful and misogynistic is definetly not cool.

I don't mean to attack virusmirusne, but it's just a general pet peeve I have...

Guys... I was really joking... it was very much a sarcasm thing. I joked being fully aware of what are held as the "traditional" views toward women in engineering. The sarcasm thing has never gone over well on the internet... it's an age-old problem. Our head programmer is a girl... and she definitely knows her stuff. I'm not a bigoted woman hater or anything. There are plenty of girls more intelligent than me and in very advanced math classes and things. My sister is graduating this spring from Rollins with a bachelors in mathematics... I know smart girls are cool... I was just trying to lighten the mood.

All of this evidenced by the post that followed my original post...

Cory, I love you! We've had problems with this in the past ... some guys on our team are always saying, "Man, I wish we had some hot girls on our team!" Or "Oh man, I wish she was on our team - we need some hot girls!" From my (and the rest of the girls on my team) standpoint ... it really hurts. Sure, the girls on my team might not be the most beautiful things that ever walked the planet ... but we've got brains. And kick*ss personalities! Doesn't that count for something? I don't mean to carry on about this, but I think this is something that affects a lot of girls involved in FIRST ... and it kind of sucks. :(

virusmirusne - I'm sure you were just trying to lighten the mood. I'm not trying to rip on you in any way, shape or form. :) But this does come up a lot with my team, and it really does hurt.

With that said, I'm gone.

- Katie

wow.......
 

Megga dittos to that last caller... with one additional comment... What you just said seems to be what FIRST is all about. Anyone, regardless of age, sex, or creed can find inspiration if they are exposed to something that inspires them. For one person it might be a good song, for someone else it might be some book they thought great and were able to relate to... But there are tons and tons of people who just love the idea of robot building. Anyone with a desire to be involved should be welcomed. Not everyone is going to be the head of ASFAB (I’ve never even been inside a machine shop)... but gifted in a particular area or not, anyone can be involved and learn. Excluding people from a team based on sex is ridiculous… and purposefully, strategically leaving out someone and not welcoming outsiders is the practice that makes up the backbone of hated and inefficient bureaucracy.

The best person for the job should do the job... but sometimes the best person for the job needs to be encouraged to realize how they can blossom. I mean... encouragement can go a long, long way... who knows what geniuses lie within the walls of your school... just waiting to find a way to channel their energy...

NEVER put "too many" and "girls" together in a sentence. :D

Looking at this discussion, I realize that I may have offended some people. If I did, I did not intend to. I tried to point out that girls aren't just looks but I probably should have been more specific.

I have been taught to respect girls, and I realize why FIRST wants girls in the program. Once again, I apologize for what I said.

meh
 

it's just that FIRST somehow doesnt appeal to girls in my school

i go to brooklyn technical highschool, one of 3 specialized science high school in nyc [stuy and bronx are the other 2]

and in a school of 5000 kids, only 2 girls joined robotics. a couple of other show up, but only cuz they got stuck in robotics class. :(

on weekends, there is only 1 maybe 2.

Re: 103 Team Members
 

i asked to exclude the PR, because it pertains to liberal arts more than engineering

Our team has two girls. We have a small team as is (~15 people or less). Both of the girls are really active. One is a rookie, so is learning, and the other (me!) does anything from electric to website.

jill

I was a proud member of the X-Cats when the girls outnumbered the boys on the team last year. And yes they were involved! Our coach was a girl, our human player was a girl, I was one of the drivers, and all the others worked really hard on everything! Some in HR, but alot in designing and machining I know that this kind of thing is rare on FIRST teams, even on 229 where if you combine the college students and high schoolers I think we have 6 girls, which is why I love talking to younger girls and inspiring them to become involved in more technical things.

no girls
 

There are no girls on the Cheesy Poofs. There is a reason for this though. We are sponsored by (and all the members except some of the adults attend(ed)) an all boys school. Bellarmine College Prep is the only all boys school in the area. We have tried to involve girls from other schools, but that never really worked too well.

Please don't attack us as discriminating against females. It just hasn't been feasable. Maybe when the administration decides to let girls in:D

The darned administration muddles up everything.

we have no girls, but hopefully 128 will be our cheerleaders again........

I'm just wondering...are there actually women out there who like intellectual asian men? hello? anyone out there?

Sorry to tell you, but it's only the ones that want help with their math homework. :rolleyes:
Although helping others with math is pretty fun...

My team has about a 5:1 male/female ratio. We come from at least 5 different schools :P And despite the fact I'm not asian, I fit the whole math homework comment perfectly :P

there is love for everyone:p

heh...
/me likes intellectual asian men....but I already have one of my own

There are, so good luck looking :P
...or you can help them with their math or bio hw, that's when they ALWAYS come up to you :)

Aww amanda, thanks for mentioning me!!! personally, i "float" around because when this is all done and through i want to be able to say i've done something in almost every part of our robotics team.
and

Originally posted by ChewyMasterFlex
I'm just wondering...are there actually women out there who like intellectual asian men? hello? anyone out there?

ohhh yeah buddy, this girl likes intellectual asian boys very much, and not for math homework!!!!

oh, and right now the majority of our team is right here, and i'm looking at 7 boys and 9 girls. hehehehe, we are rocking this year buddy!! :yikes: :D

::Glares evily::....






Did I spell evily right...?

Wow, I find it rare to see schools with more girls than boys on the team (assuming that the school pop is around 50/50) in our area...guess there are more in other places.

and for your reference, it's evilly with two l's

team 330 has 5 girls on the team and all of us do like tons of stuff. Personally I am on the Pneumatics team, Mechanical team (drive sub-team but I sit in on most of the other sub-team discussions), Systems engineering team, and am webmaster!!!! the other girls do at least as much stuff as I do which is very cool! GO TEAM 330 GIRLS (Sarah, Mary, Calli, Willow and ME!!!!)

Ahhh, thank ya

we are 5 girls, including the teacher Simone.

they are:

Stefi ( me )
Marta
Tahina
Luiza

and

Simone

we are great and we rules!

lol!


:rolleyes: :p

nha

ok, so the guys outnumber us at 12 or 13 boys to 10 girls, but we're still close.

Ewwwww girls. It's quite literally like a soap opera with some of our girl teamates (not all).

we have 4 girl members of the team.
out of about 16, so they make up about 1/4th of our team.

Team 191 is almost 2/3 girls!

Yeah yeah yeah, we've all seen the x-cats...

Just wanted to say that out of 20 team members - 12 are girls and most of them are very active. Those who do not want to build make up our PR base. As a female team leader, I think in order to get more female students on the team you need to have female adults!

Michelle Ritter
The Apes of Wrath

"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
Yogi Berra

(So what percentage is that?)

Just as an objective male, I'd like to point out that there are school robotics teams, and there are all girls schools, therefore there are all girls robotics teams-such as the St. Joes team.

one of the only reasons why a lot of our girls don't have thier hands on the lathe or the programming is because we need people to do inventory, PR, fundraising, etc, and when we signed up for these jobs almost NO GUYS volunteered for them, so the girls stepped in and did those jobs (ROCK ON to jessa, erin, brittany, kim, and all the others). I'm sure that they would be more than happy to take over machining or whatever, but they were nice enough to do the jobs that needed to be done.

Y'all rock!
lauren

Every year, the majority of kids on our team have been girls... we are a public school, so no one can really explain this phenomenon, except for the fact that we are just so darn cool ;)
Unfortunately/tragically we graduated a ton of kids last year, and this year, for the first time ever, boys outnumber us!! But, there are still 5 chicks on the team and we are all getting our hands dirty with the boys. if anyone ever said boys were better at robotics/science/whatever they can be considered legally insane :D

And 862--we will def. be your cheerleaders again this year :yikes:

we only have one female out in the shop working in metal shavings and grease on our team. the rest are in PR/business/webpage/non-building factions of the team, all by choice rather then default.

we have a couple female adult advisors/alumni, but following the patern of the students, are also not out in the shop.

our team by far consists of males then females

we don't have a shop nor are any of our *core* robotics members female

*shrug*...plenty of other (and BETTER!) places to meet girls

Umm... KennethToronto, FIRST doesn't try to attract girls for the purpose of letting guys meet them. I'm trying to be nice here. Please show a little respect for the girls in FIRST.

i know there are schools out there with girls leading the building and stuff, but is it just me or do most teams have girls working on the pr/fundraising stuff while the guys do most of the building.

That's about it.......
 

If that is the case or not on some teams, it doesn't matter.
The point of FIRST is to get a wide range of kids together and have them work as a TEAM.
Each company has different parts, building, presenting, leading.. Etc.
If what you say is the situation on your team, then if it wasn't for the girls, you wouldn't have the money to participate, or the rep. to be known.

With 470 most of the girls work on PR/FR/etc. but that is by choice. They all learn the tools we use, and the right way to use them. (Contrary to popular belief, not everything is a hammer). The trend seems to be that once they know the tools and how to make them work well, they want to use them. Some of the girls work on build and electronics, others work in PR.

None of the PR people are limited to just PR, just as none of the build people are not limited to build.

it's about GIRLS
 

Okay, girls do a lot more than PR stuff! My team is all girls, and we accoplish everything ourselves:) I think your generalizing way too much, we go to an all girls school (team 692), and we get our hands dirty. We do the designing, mechanics, electrical, pneumonics, programming, website, animation, and we're darn proud of it. Our team has even double every year, and this is our third year...can't wait til regionals :)
Herm

hum..
 

WELL we have mainly one girl that really works hands on with the bot..HOWEVER all us others will help out wherever there is help that is needed. I mainly work on the sprit things and do whatever needs to be done....i will pretty much do whatever...i can't really work hands on with the robot because that's not really my thing and i don't really do well with working with those things....but we do have others besides that one that helps when things need to be done.....but yet we pretty much work together to get things done....BUT we don't have any cheerleaders on our team...;)

We have 2 girls on manufacturing and one in design. The PR stuff goes on at a different school so I can't comment there. Still, its mostly guys building the robot...

And the teacher that started the team is a girl, but she's the only one.

Ok Geroge person who started this thread, let me give you a hint, how long was tech an all boys school, so we've had girls in the building for like maybe 20 years, yeah the school is like 5,000 but look at the majors, TLA (techonolgy and liberal arts) is like all girls while Electrical Engineering has 5 girls in the senior class and we have more than one girl, I've been doing this 3 years, you have kelly for 2 years, Rosette i always there, Ms. Sabastian. So hush

please none of this ...

take it to www.whimit.com

my point
 

look all im saying is im gratefull for the females

a whole weekend of dirty shweaty guys, powertools, machine oil, and pizza is somehow mollified by the [female] presense.

Re: girls ?
 

Well i'm going to speak on behalf of the girls from my team and say, all two of us high school girls are fairly active in our team, and we are the first to jump to the work... no offence to the high school guys on our team... Anyone else from 229 wanna back us girls up??:D

Re: it's about GIRLS
 

It wasn't a generalization, but I was just wondering what other teams' structure is like. A lot of girls on my team work on the building too, and some are crucial builders, so I have nothing against it. I also feel that it is great for FIRST to try to mix the two sexes and prove that some girls can do A LOT more work in the shop than guys =P

Re: Re: it's about GIRLS
 

We've had female captains 3 years in a row, Angela worked on the robot at machine shop last year, co-drove at all competitions and is this year's captain for Redondo High. Mira Costa claims no girls at their school would be interested. We have 8 girls on the team, all from Redondo cuz SURPRISE, when they're recruited by a friend, they find they like it. There are 21 boys on the team, Mira Costa has 10 of them. A couple of years ago there were double the Mira Costa members, 2 redondo boys and @ 2 females from Mira Costa.

Angela still runs into new boys on the block who THINK they can beat her at working on the field or the robot. NOT!!!

14yo Marygrace is our TIG welder.

Senior Becky's father is the robotics' engineer, and she's going for engineering in college.

I can tell there are freshman girls who are going to be kicking butt.

Multiple Schools
 

This isn't weird! Check CA Robotics out - Team 619 has approximately 30 members from over 10 different schools: We aren't sponsored by a school, and have meetings in donated space located in downtown Charlottesville.

As far as I have seen, many (most?) of the teams out there are entirely from one school. Our method of running the organization works well, and allows us to pull in needed members from ALL the area schools, not just one that is sponsoring us.

Are there any other teams that run this way?

Jonathan

jonaturtle@aol.com
CA Robotics team 619
http://www.carobotics.org
Webmaster, Lead Programmer
Student Lead Animator
Student Lead Control / Electronics

Re: Multiple Schools
 

We are 2 rival schools - Redondo High and Mira Costa High (Manhattan Beach) CA. Redondo has the auto shop.

This is the first year that we're really reaching out. Peninsula High next door city Palos Verdes couldn't get the school behind them, so we've invited two interested students to join our team. We also have 3 8th graders and one 5th grader - a computer whiz.

Last year VP talked of opening up our team to the continuation school, but I don't think anyone let them know. They'd be welcome.

Teams......
 

Re: Teams......
 

We have something like 14 area high schools working together on our team. Everyone converges at a DuPont site in Wilmington, DE to work. There really isn't enough interest at any one HS to start a team, so we all get together. One of our students is home schooled and he drives 2hrs to the build site. He chose to be on the web team, though, so he can do a lot of work from home. I travel 30min to the build site almost every day and don't mind it. It is really cool when you go to the build site and have to show your badge to get in the gate past the guard shack. Definitely adds the coolness factor over working in a school shop. That, and we can leave all of our big stuff out... like the ramp and robot parts.

Our team is mostly a home-school team. We do have one or two PS people, though.

Correct me if I am wrong, Sachiel7, but at nearly all of the machine shop meetings there has been one girl at each one. I think we have five or six on the team.

As far as I can tell, only one is interested in that type of work.

This is strait from memory, so don't think this is all verified.

Re: Re: Multiple Schools
 

See? the guy on FIRST was right...it is able to break barriers between rivals and let them work together :P

Re: Re: Re: Multiple Schools
 

When Senator Bowen visited in response to seeing a press release, school superintendents showed up. I told them I wanted to build a small robot to race the football across the field at our next rival football game. Manhattan Beach superintendent said he'd chase after it. Redondo superintendent goodnaturedly passed on saying anything, but later asked to be on our regular team email distribution list.



BTW, 14yo Marygrace who took welding jr college welding class and is doing our TIG welding on month's rental donated TIG is now teaching other students to TIG. 18yo Angela did great her first time. The boys take a little longer to learn :p .

I don't know what the boys/mentors would do without us. Sometimes I feel like a mom. Kt makes sure that all of the management is taken care of, she's great at fixing things, and rocks your socks off in electrical.

I work with all of the groups so that I know what is going on, because of this i'm good at utilizing every member on our team because I always have something for people to do. I work on that while walking in and out of the shop. Sure the drawings get a bit dirty, but hey we've got stuff to do. It's my job to make sure that the robot gets manufactured, kt has to make it work :p

I would have to say that the girls are a very important part of our team.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Multiple Schools
 

That is very very cool. Thats absolutely amazing that a 14 year old can weld. Not only can she weld, but TIG too!!. That just goes to show you that preconceived misconceptions about girls and age are totally off base.

Cory

We have a few underclassman girls that are better on the milling machine than most of the guys on our team. They also chop, drill, measure, assemble, and do virtually everything else in the shop at or above the level of the guys.

Re: Re: girls ?
 

You two are some of the most enthusiastic, and hard working students I've seen on our team. I wish we had 10 more like you!

It's not quanitity, it's quality :D

yeah yeah
 

yeah, we have girls...
Although, we really don't have a clue most of the time. For the most part, I stick to my computer over in the corner, and at times, help out with some electrical work. And sometimes, they do try to make us into "administrative assistants". I guess I can't blame them, I am a bit mechanically illiterate. (stereotypical girl... haha)

As for the cheerleader comment, I resent that. In the end, I WILL be a cheerleader, but, it doesn't matter. Our teams need the support, and it could be worse!

okay, thought I would defend that!!

/me Looks back into his credits list........... we have a girl on animations?

As a guy. I think that just some people aren't....very good with their comments. TO be honest, I wish we had a few more girls on the team, especially in direct construction of the robot. But it just so happens that the girls on our team are rather nice and pretty.
*I won't say hot for fear of backlash*

We did. Yeah ... she kind of stopped coming. Now we're back down to three. :rolleyes:

- Katie

Yes very important, just as important as anybody else on the team, but they are NOT the entire team.

:confused:

Ed,
In some circles the X-Cats have a reputation for being a team made up largely of girls. Most teams who compete against them realize this. In a competition dominated by desperate guys, you can see how this thing would get around...

I remember last year in Cleveland I was looking for one of my drivers, and heard he was "at the pool with xcats in bikinis."

It's not necessarily a bad thing is it? ;)

It is if you're a chaperone.:rolleyes: :D