Man, all this whining about how FIRST is being political, it reminds me of, oh, I don't know, politics, businesses, other non-profits, and maybe even groups of people in general?
BTW, my team doesn't give two flying monkeys about the whole FTC-vs-VRC debacle, and I had to bring them all up to speed before they knew why it was such a big deal to "the
entire FIRST community (/sarcasm)". Are they bummed that they can't use anything their hearts desire? Sure. But are they fuming mad, ready to quit this excellent program, because we've got a classroom full of VEX kits that we can't use? Nope. We're too busy working on our hostbot and game strategy to care.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
What the hell am I supposed to tell a student who asks why we can't use aluminium that has a pre drilled hole in it?
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"Welcome to the real world"? If I worked at Google,
why can't I use my Windows-based notebook? They're in high school now, kind of late to be sheltering them, much-less hiding seemingly asinine rules and restrictions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
What am I supposed to tell them when [...] non Tetrix catapult designs derailed by Update 1?
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That a catapult was awfully out-of-place in terms of the intent of the mini-bot race, if common sense were applied?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
How can I rationalize all of the very, very public flaunting and politics of the FIRST organization that they catch wind of?
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Tell them it's not all sunshine and rainbows, and things don't always go your way. Good luck finding a group of
organized human beings that aren't even remotely political.
No one is perfect. FIRST is not perfect, you're not perfect, I'm not perfect. At the end of the day, people make mistakes, and people disagree with each other. But the beauty of choices, is just that. You don't like it? Next year, switch your team to VEX/BEST/whatever. Before you do that, though, do me a favor: Take a poll at your next team meeting. Ask how many people hate FIRST so much for promoting FTC that they want to switch programs next year, then ask how many people are enjoying their time in FIRST enough to overlook this
TRAGIC event and continue next year.