[Paul Copioli]

OK I have sat by and kept silent on this thread long enough. I very wise man told me long ago that if you spread an untruth or a statement not based on fact long enough that people will believe it as fact.

Please, if you are going to make statements like, "these powerhouse teams that have the mentors build the robot ...." make sure you have the facts to back it up. You may not call teams out by name, but we all know who you are addressing.

So, to spread some facts:

Team 217 has 44 students and about 10 mentors (including the teachers). 12 of these students were on the design team along with me and three engineers from FANUC Robotics. The FANUC engineers were mostly there during the week while I was in Texas to answer SolidWorks questions, etc. The students are trained by a SolidWorks professional for 1 week and are trained by me for one day on how to do sheet metal the IFI way. I design certain parts of the robot and the students design others. In most cases I design less than 40% of the robot, but check 100% of the students work.

My challenge to other "mentor built" teams: please share your facts ... all of them.

In short, if you don't have facts, please stop making assumptions.

One last thing, if you ever run into a 217 student from 2004 and earlier ask them what our team was like back then. I had the pleasure of running into a former student leader from 2003 and 2004 and her comments about how far our team has come since then really hit home with me ... thanks Jacqui!

Thanks,
Paul