Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Sorry for posting another thread about not so graciously professional behavior, but I just thought that the situation that I'm talking about is completely different from the other thread and would be considered an irrelevant topic.
At the UTC New England regional (2 weeks ago?), My team was staying at the Crowne Plaza hotel, in, of course Hartford, Conn. When we were there, this kid from another team kept on knocking at our door and running away quickly to his room. My friends fount this very annoying, so whe made a stake out. We caught him and, without violence or cursing or anything meant to harm anyone in anyway, told him to not do any of that immature annoying behavior again and let him go. Of course, his friends ot a little impatient and closed the door on him. We went back to our room and thought nothing of it.
We could hear this kid screaming and pounding the door clearly, he was at the complete other side of the hallway. Some other people called security and they came up there and I dont know what happened after that.

Now, it seems that some people from the hotel or something, are calling my school, and it just so happens that My team may get in trouble, I think it was the other freshmen (who knocked a painting off a wall and broke the glass off of it), but I'm thinking it was this.

This stupid behavior has to stop, I don't think that I should have to suffer because of someone elses misbehavior. We are supposed to be the most intelligent people from the schools we are representing, and even those kids get in trouble.
If I find out my team has to suffer because of another team's wrongdoing, I will take some kind of action.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Um, you were saying something about graciously professional behavior?
:rolleyes:

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

There are ways to stop this, Make a list of hotel rules for each student and have them sign them, I know a piece of paper can not stop someone from doing something stupid but it might help. Also on MOE we do an open door policy up till our team curfew, once you get back from a the comp your hotel room door stays open, either the door is held open by something or the dead bolt lock out so the door can't close. This makes it harder for un unruly things can not go un herd in a room. Also there is always an adult or senior/trusted student who should be in charge of keeping the piece.
It is not a perfect system but it has worked for us and we have had little problems in hotels.

I am sorry to hear about what happened in your hotel and I hope that it doesn't happen again to anyone.
On that note I can't wait to see everyone at the Omni in ALT this year again.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

When a team is given some kind of freedom away from competition, crazy stuff can happen. Most teams relieve some kind of energy in the hotels by doing stupid stuff. I guess for the most part it ends in good terms, but I guess for you guys you caught some bad luck. Hope it works out...


...and remember GP is the way to be

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

If you know it's someone on another team, ask your mentors to talk to their mentors about it. Surely any group of rational human beings (which FIRST seems to attract) can work this out.

As for hotel rules, I've seen a few. ROTC simply split the sexes (sans chaperone) and taped the doors after X hour. Debate let go on even that much (as long as the door was wide open), with taped doors. It really depends on your school and your students as to what works.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

I honestly don't understand what happened, but here are a few suggestions...

You need to handle this as responsible and well-behaved as you claim yourself to be. That means you're gonna have to give a little.

1) Get some mentors on your side. To a school board's ears, a student's voice may mean nothing. If you want to share your side of the story, do it respectfully and have backup.

2) Don't be afraid to admit if you could have handled it wrong. You might have, it's impossible to know. Understand that what you do right now will affect your team at home and at competition.

3) Put a different hotel guide system into place...Kyle's sounded effective to me.

Good luck
- Genia

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

For future reference, this kind of post is probably better suited to the Firstaholics Anonymous Forum.

That said, I don't think your team will get in trouble for the kid. You probably will have to pay for the glass that was broken. In the future, however, you have much better options available to you in these situations. If you have a problem with another team or a teammate acting immaturely and causing problems, then take the mature way out. Call your adults and tell them about it and let them handle it for you. If you're feeling adventuresome, find out what room the kid is from and then call the front desk and tell them about it. There's no need for you to catch the kid yourself and put yourself and your good name at risk. You're actually lucky that the kid just got locked out by his friends. Had you hurt him or something when you "caught him", even by accident and not intending to hurt him, you could be in serious trouble.

So basically, the best way to deal with immaturity is to be the mature one and handle the situation in a sensible way.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Being a kid myself, I have to say that these acts are often fun when the victim is someone you know, of course to someone who you don't know how they will react is very bad. There is never anything from with jokes on teammates and friends that you KNOW will take it as a joke. I stress joke because you should know %110 of how they would react to it. Like I said in the other incident, what ever happened to a good clean game of hackey sack? I mean come on... immaturity is bad enough, that was just stupidity.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Well, in my team now, its kind of taboo to play with and/ or come into any kind of contact with any other member of FIRST who is not on our team. This is because of this one jerk on our team who doesnt do ANYTHING but just sit around and play cards with kids from other teams, and the last person we want to be like is him. When we were in the hotel and were going for our important scouting meeting in one of our rooms, that kid didnt come, instead, he played with the other teams and played halo 2. So, naturally, any kind of interference caused by another team is really not welcome among my team. As a matter of fact, if they find out that I'm actually posting on Chief Delphi, they will probably compare me to the one that i will only call "Andrew".
But anyway, it shoudnt happen again, and its probably because of the glass, and the noise the freshman portion of our team was making. (Yeah Im a freshman, but I bunk with the older kids.)

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Psst...

Beyond the khaki's, blue polo shirts tucked in, and orange hats, we have some bad apples. I admit it. But when you lay down what is acceptable and not I find most kids understand and comply with the rules. These rules aren't just to keep our image proper or to stop annoying others, but to show kids there is more to life than mindless jokes and stunts. When we slip up, we all get the smack down, as anyone in Houston knew two years ago when we were all grounded for the night.

0 tolerance policies aren't fun as frosh, but man, they rock when you are leadership. ;) :p

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

I'm not sure how to reply to this, but I think you're being a tad off topic, and if there's underlying tension on your team with that, it's not totally appropriate to fix on a public forum.

If you need to discipline a member of your team, then do so in private. An individual who doesn't contribute to the team, on most teams, doesn't attend competition.

However, don't seclude yourself. Having an open relationship with other teams discourages behavior like what you experienced. You don't have to distract yourself, in fact you shouldn't, but chances are you'll have to work this issue out with your mentors.

- Genia

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

I don't know if any of you heard about the 04 Tkat WWE incident. We were at the hotel and some kids thought it would be funny to mess around with eachother. To make a long story short. A kid ended up getting thrown into a wall...leaving a big crack. They did the right thing and went straight to a teacher and admitted they did something wrong. They weren't in a fight or anything, it was just horseplay, gone bad. Hopefully, we don't have a replay of that this weekend, I think we all learned from that experience.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

This may sound a bit harsh, but that's not remotely normal.

The best part of FIRST is meeting new people and forming friendships and relationships that could last for years, if not a lifetime. Completely denying that to your team doesn't seem fair to me. If I didn't have the opportunity to get to know other people, I wouldn't be in FIRST. It just wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

Beyond that, being forced to be in a relatively small group for a long period of time can lead to stress and some major team issues. I've learned that one firsthand.

Don't let one or two kids spoil it for everyone else on your team.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Every year I'm witness to (or hear about) some sort of "inappropriate" behavior at the hotel between competition. Whether it's kids pitching luggage off the balcony to teammates below, or hitting on young teachers in a rude manner on the elevator, to having a "hypothetical" question presented to me by a student about buying porn on a school trip.
Kids are prone to crazy things. We had security called on our kids and all they were doing was going door to door to each others rooms and knocking before they entered (obviously the guy hates kids).
One thing we make clear to our kids is we will not tape their doors or put pennies on them or anything like that. As our old lead mentor Gene Wicks simply put it "If we have to do that we won't take you." Just because they're kids doesn't mean they aren't accountable for their actions and that need to be made clear upfront so problems are avoided and embarrassment are avoided or something worse.
Remember when you are on the road you are not just representing yourself but your family, your school,your community, your sponsors, and FIRST itself and all of those can be forever tarnished because of "harmless fun"
It's just not worth it.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Well let's see

Breaking a picture vs. threatening another student ( I know...it was "non-threatening" to you, but to him...who knows )

Either way, it sounds like you weren't exactly innocent.

IT ISN'T THE STUDENT'S JOB TO DISCIPLINE OTHER STUDENTS.

That's why God invented mentors. Let them do their jobs. If they have a problem with your team, there are lots of people they can go to for help. Lots of seasoned pros on these forums. Maybe you should just ask them to log on here if they think you have a problem.

If this situation happens in the future, I would urge you not to take matters into your own hands, call your mentor and have them deal with the situation.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Teenagers left unsupervised in a hotel room are like freshman in college. They feel it's somewhat of a dorm, and being out on their own for what may be the first real time, they excercise their freedom. But at least they aren't throwing keg parties.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

ya, something like that happened at our hotel at Boilmaker


apperantly some senior from another team started to shoot things out of the window and hitting other windows, cars, and people. not sure of hte details but i heard their mentor talking about it.

i agree that these actions need to be stopped. Everyone represents FIRST robotics off and on the field

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

I think it was last year when a kid got tied up and muzzeled and thrown in an elevator by an opposing team, saturday night at the Omni in Atlanta after compotion. I think i herd that the team that did it almost got kicked out of the hotel, not sure what teams were involved but i do remember the incadent.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

When I was a mentor on the Fairport team we only had one level of discipline. You break the rules and two mentors take you to the airport, call your parents and put you on the next plane home

and your parents get the bill.

Its harsh, its not fair. We dont care. We dont have time to play nanny at these events. If you can not follow the rules and control yourself, stay home.

That has been our policy since '97. So far we have never had to send anyone home.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Stuff like that should never happen. I will admit a group of crazy robotics people will do crazy things in a hotel, but things such as i heard you explain should not happen. I will admit me and a few other students from my team got a little loud in the hotel room playing PS2 games and Computer Games, and yes some of it was late at night. But we never went out in the halls yelling, or knocked on anyones door and run away, or even destroy hotel property, which i recently heard about a team that did exactly that. When we were told to quite down we did. Our teams mentors usually trust us enough to let us do what we want as far as the hotel situation goes, of course there is curfew times and such rules as that. If we ever do anything wrong we get in trouble and lose privileges. However we haven't got in trouble and don't plan to.

My question to you is, where was that team members mentor(s) when this was all going on?

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Hah. At GLR our team only had to deal with a bunch on kids seeing snow for the first time. With all the ensuing snow fights and vainly trying to run up the giant snowy hill behind the arena.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Mentors cant be every where at once, when you have 20-30 kids or so you cant expect a mentor in each room with the kids at all times.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

True. I admit our mentors were not around us all the time. But i would have that by that point in time one of that teams mentors would have known about it. And i suppose with my team only having 7 students and a dozen mentors its a little different for me too.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

The hotel incident aside, your team should be very worried about this "taboo" about coming into contact with any other member of FIRST who are not on your team. There is a reason there's a Sportsmanship award where the judges go around asking teams about other team's good sportsmanship, and why mentoring other teams is encouraged. It is not the intention of FIRST to build isolated teams and vicious rivalries, if that was the case, the game would most likely be one robot against one robot, not two against two, or three against three with constantly shifting alliances.

I hope this "taboo" attitude is only on the part of the students and not the mentors and I hope even more that it can be changed. Chief Delphi is one of the most amazing sources for FIRST that you will come across, and I truly believe that teams that do not have at least one member as a regular poster here are missing out on some great opportunities. After my first year volunteering, I belonged to a robotics team. After my fourth year volunteering, I now have a whole robotics community, and am so much richer for it.

And as for "Andrew", maybe your team leaders (students and adults alike) need to ask themselves why they have not been able to reach this student to engage him in more participation. And if this is such a bad situation that if affects the whole team the way it appears to, then they need to establish rules to prevent this from happening again.

I'm sorry your team may be blamed for something they possibly didn't do. Misbehaving teens is a risk all teams face when traveling, I know this because I've heard the stories from students who are now alumni, and I am so very, very grateful I did not have to chaperon them and I've seen some bad behavior (our students are pretty good now, but they still cause an occasional grousing).

Heidi

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

It's rather unfortunate for kids to represent your team like that. :eek: As a student myself... I don't believe I've ever been compelled to do something comepletely irrational. I'd recommend a zero-tolerance/open door policy. Make sure that students who are prone to misbehave are aware that if they do anything to that nature, they're going home. Also, make sure that their freedom is still in tact. Give them the opportunity to be with friends that were placed in other hotel rooms (whether boy or girl) as long as the door is propped open by an object or the dead bolt. Although we're "kids"... we're growing young adults... things will happen, but in the long run, we're all responsible for our own actions.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

It is sad that you have had to face such an event, deal with it smartly.

Firstly, kids are kids. They will do things you don't like or want. They will do stupid things that could cost you something. They will do things that annoy everyone. They will do things that annoy other members on your own team itself. That is the first thing all mentors should understand because sooner or later there will be such kids on the team. It is almost inevitable. How many times is it that in a high level class(AP? Honors?) you find some kid asking absolutely stupid questions? It's just the way things work.

With that said, you need to learn to deal with it. On our team, we do give them some room to have fun. They know they are responsible for their actions and so they learn to control themselves at times. If by any chance they do go overboard, we send them back home on the next flight at the cost of their own parents + any cost they have to pay for damage. This includes bad behavior.

All in all, it is a competition with high school kids participating.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Teams should start taping their members into the rooms. I was on a team for 4 years and each night we had a curfew and were taped in our rooms. If the tape seal was broken the next morning from us opening the door, we were in trouble!

Good times trapped in the motel room(s). Nintendo 64, Mt. Dew, and a ceiling fan.....you do the math!

Lol those who were with me on the team know!

Ask Elgin about the time he broke a monorail.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

April 2002... the Championship in Florida... don't know names or team numbers, but some loosely-chaperoned robotics students thought it would be funny to remove the tape from all of the taped doors they saw...

Heidi

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiki
If I find out my team has to suffer because of another team's wrongdoing, I will take some kind of action.


Doesn't mean they mean't something bad by this post, it could simply mean they will talk to someone at FIRST or a person's teacher or mentor.
They might just be referring to taking some appropriate action.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Thats probably not the best way to do this. We had a problem with students leaving their rooms, on the last night of our trip.. those students were required to individually present an apology to the entire team.. and I'm fairly certain that they will never leave their rooms again.

Tape just doesn't seem like a good idea.. it will only encourage them to do stupider things.. going off the balconies is one thing I wouldn't doubt someone would try. Or through the ceilings, if the hotel has a dropped ceiling.

There's a thread about this somewhere else.. not too sure where though

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Yes, you definitely don't want to tape kids in a room. What do you know, they might jump out of the window? Some kids are stupid enough to do things like that. Figure out other ways because there are.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Actually you could just tape the windows. Any other possible scenario will result in people going splat against the pavement in an attempt to escape.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

It is shamefull that anyone would act like that. I gaurentee that 1549 would never act like that. We look foreward to seing alla u down the hall someday!

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

Uh, I was under the assumption that they were using a small piece of tape as a tripwire.. not really possible to do with windows, unless the teacher/mentor wants to climb down from the balcony :)

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

OMG That would be hilarious seeing one of our teachers out hangin over the balcony taping the window. knowing them theyd end up tripping it themselves or find no way to get infrom the balcony after they taped it. :D
Man we'd have to get our camra guy on it.

-Crash

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

I have almost posted in this thread so many times. Once again I would like reiterate whomever's point that it is the job of the mentors to discipline students. If your students act inappropriately on a trip, I don't care what hour of the night, the parents need to be called and the child sent home at the expense of the child and his/her family. It's inappropriate and that's all that needs to be said. FIRST is a privilege, not a right and students are expected to act with such a level of maturity.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

It's one thing to mess with your team, mentors, and other teams who want to have fun.

For students, just think about this question before you do something stupid:

"Is this worth possibly getting my ______ kicked by the people inside?"

My team probably wouldn't fight anybody over something stupid like knocking on a door and being annoying, but we have 4-5 guys who would have no problem pulling somebody by their shirt and getting in a kid's face to tell them to stop being idiots.

As far as the tape, our school had a trip to Philly and the teachers put stacks of soda cans by the doors and the kids would knock them over when the doors opened. Eventually we realized if we place the cans a little more to the left of the door, the door would clear the cans and the teachers wouldnt pay attention the cans were moved to the left when they picked them up in the morning.

When the teachers figured it out, everynight one kid would go kick every pile of soda cans over, that way the teachers had no clue who really left their room and who didn't. The teachers eventually figured out the students did it just to tick them off, because the hotel windows faced a drive thru movie theater that showed XXX movies after 11pm, and the boys wouldn't leave their rooms and would talk to the male teachers about the movies on the big screen the night before.

Students will almost always find a way to sneak out, even if they have nowhere to go, people will sneak out just to see if they could leave the room without getting caught.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

I was under the assumption that it's there to ensure that no one went outside. It's impossible for anyone to reseal the door once you broke it from the inside thus the mentors know where you have been.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

The fact that the teachers even need to seal the doors is terrible! Can't we be mature enough to stay inside when we should? Maybe if the teachers didn't actually set so many limits no one would be motivated to break them... I don't know... just a thought. We should all know the limits. I know I'll just want to rest after a full day of competition. I don't think anyone who isn't flat out exhausted at the end of the day, and still has energy to fool around should be on the team. Because they obviously aren't contributing enough, just wasting the team time, and money. I'm not going to work my butt off raising money so someone can go to Atlanta and do nothing but fool around after competition. Let's grow up. If you're not discussing strategy or something, you shouldn't be out of the room. If your coversation isn't a friendly one, be quiet, and get back in your room. It's as simple as that. Can I get an amen?

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

last year at UCF i put a 16" with zach "tripping on me" and we checked the same room this year and they turned it into a storage room.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

I've always thought Band students would act worse then FIRST Teams...Our Marching Band stayed over night for festivle (120+ kids) and had no problem with people doing stupid things...we didn't even have chaperones in the rooms. There were a few rooms of chaperones down the hall, but thats it. All they did was check to make sure we were in our room around 11:00 pm then they went to bed.

If a student is involved in FIRST, they should be able to handle themselved in a professional manner. If I was in the position of a mentor and had to deal with students misbehaving...
1st Infraction: Private Conversation with student and mentors.
2nd Infraction: Phone Call Home/Loss of Practipation for rest of event and season.
3rd Infraction: Expulsion from team (like school expulsion where you have to appeal to get back on and stuff).

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

You're half right and half wrong.

The mentors shouldn't need to monitor us 24/7. My team's mentors are cool and realistic, and they expect us to be realistic back. Most FIRST teams are like that, but out of the 300 teams, probably 20 will have kids that are complete idiots and completely wild. I have a feeling most advisors aren't going to tape kids in their room's simply for the fact they trust their kids, and if their kids leave their room it's for a good reason. (Like to get soda or candy out of a machine)

As far as not leaving the room except to talk stratgey and stuff is a little bit too much to ask. I'm sure the mentors of my team are going to be jokeing around and hanging out with the team 228 mentors, I'm goiing to be with friends from another team, theirs so much more stuff to do than worry about the compeition after you're in the hotel. Even if your robot is majorly damaged, no sense dealing and worrying about stuff that you can't change or fix until the next day. When we get to atlanta we have semi-major problems to figure out, but we won't let that stop us from going bowling and having fun the night before the compeition or the nights of the compeition. If you're worrying about robotics and stratgey 24/7 then it's almost more stress than fun and not worth going.

Just my $0.02

(When i say "you", "your", "you're" I mean people in general not speaking directly to BaldwinNYRookie)

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

People should be mature enough to know how to act in a hotel. Its unreasonable to expect everyone to do so all the time (heck, anyone can start talking a little louder subconsciously, laughing loud etc), and I understand that, but if you know you're being annoying, go outside or at least stop doing it. I was unfortunate enough to be sitting in my hotel at the Midwest regional reading a book, and there was a really loud disturbance that was going on for at least 2 minutes. After about 30 seconds of being distracted, I slipped my shoes on and walked outside. They even apologized for the noise, but once I was back in they just continued to do it. At that point I just gave up.

But really, is it that hard to realize that people are trying to sleep in a hotel? It was only about 8:45, but still, its extremely impolite to be making such a racket, especially after you know you're consciously making it. I couldn't really tell what they were doing, but it wasnt just talking and laughing it was something else.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

In chesapeake we were bad. But relative to all the other people there, we didn't get security called on us, so I guess it wasn't that bad. We only messed with people on our teams, never any other teams.

In Philly I guess we were all still tired from the Chesapeake regional, because it was really tame. They taped us in and that just made me angry, they had never done that in the past 2 years. Not that I wanted to go out and do anything. I just found the tape insulting. We still harassed each other with the phones though. The fake security/font desk calls are the best :D .

You just have to have kids have a mutual respect with the mentors. Our 2 main mentors are our schools machining teacher, and the CADD teacher. They both get the mutual respect of their students, and so we listen to them. The teachers that don't get the mutual respect of the kids don't get a lot of respect at all outside of school.
Were almost adults, treat us like ones, get mutual respect, and then they will listen to you with no problem.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

1. Good advice, worded in a mostly disrespectful way
2. Note for next post: do not answer to posts if you will post as inappropriately as that

When I read this thread, I didn't ever expect to see something like that written by someone attending Purdue. I hope you apologize for that post, because I certainly know that wasn't graciously professional. I am not bashing you, just letting you know that you need to watch the way you word what you post on here.

Re: Bad behavior in the hotels.
 

That's really sad that your team doesn't interact with other teams much after competition hours (although we all know that competition definately doesn't end after you leave the arena...) just because of one person who takes it a bit too far. I encourage you guys to realize that there is moderation involved when it comes to hanging out with other teams, or your own team members even. Play when its time to play, enjoy other's company, make friends, and work when its time to work.