Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Line
Every team at the regional I'm going to mention will remember this happening.
Gary Voshol concocted a April fools day prank to play on us Michigan teams - on April 1st of last year, during an event, he announced an emergency rule update. He told us FIRST had released a rule update stating that they believed it was against the spirit of the game for a robot to lock into the tower, so no one could stay there more than 5 seconds.
Of course, this was a jab at 469, who everyone in the district (and the country) knew had an incredible robot.
The number of people who cheered sickened and angered me - I actually yelled a word in anger that I wasn't too proud of at the time. A good chunk of the students at that venue were more than happy to have the dreams of a team crushed rather than play against them.
I suspect it would have met the same response anywhere in the country.
This starts with the mentors. It's up to us to stamp it out. It's up to us to make it right. It's up to us to guide our team members and remind them that if it were OUR game breaking robot, we'd be devastated. I wonder how many teams talked about that occurrence. I know we did.
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You mean the same robot that they cheered when it tipped over in auton? That was... not a proud weekend for FIRST imho.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryVoshol
Regarding the April Fool's joke last year, we had no idea the crowd would react that way. We thought it would cause the team to sweat for a couple of minutes, and then we'd all share a good laugh, as had happened with other pranks in prior years. Had we known the reaction would be so negative against the team we would never have done it. I immediately went to the team and apologized, and if I never apologized publicly please accept this post as that apology.
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Not to harp on something negative but I did want to point out that even a joke turned out to cause a lot of bad feelings and anger. I know for a fact some people lost a lot respect for people as a result of that little gag. Be very careful what you say in jest.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karthik
The reserved nature is typical, but I wouldn't call it "stand-offish". We definitely shared details about our robot to many teams who came by to visit. There was definitely no reluctance to show off information to US teams.
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I can confirm this, 1114 has never (in my experience) shied away from telling any details about their robot. My suggestion would be to talk to a student though. (I think it is significantly more inspiring to have a student explain a system rather than an engineer)
Quote:
Originally Posted by JVN
148 will be sporting "Be Professional" buttons for the rest of our events this year.
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If you wouldn't mind sending one or two of those over by the Kettering table in scholarship row I would appreciate it.
And now that I've replied to every post in this thread... John, I have had numerous talks with Karthik about this topic and the utter disrespect that powerhouses get from students who just don't get it. I have also come to the conclusion that it just isn't these students' fault. FIRST is such an alien concept to anyone outside of it and unless someone teaches them that you don't want to BEAT 1114 you want to BE 1114 they will never know. I don't blame students for bad attitudes, I blame mentors who don't discourage them. I will admit that I am not exactly a ray of sunshine all the time but I will say that I tried my best to remind my students that this is about inspiration and we should celebrate excellence instead of shunning it.