[ATannahill]

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?

Simply put, no. F.I.R.S.T. is For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. These teams inspire girls to pursue science and technology (I have no statistics to prove this but I am going to assume as such).

Are they (or any team that excludes based on something petty) the best at inspiring science and technology? I doubt it. A diversified team can bring more ideas and different view than one that is not.

Now to address the question in your poll. Should exclusive teams be allowed in FIRST?

IMO no. I don't care if your parents paid money to send you to an exclusive school or if mentors or sponsors feel that it is in the best interest for XYZ to happen. You WILL at some point have to work with other kinds of people. If you demand to not work with person X because they are ______, your going to be the one on the ugly end of the stick.

I have seen people talk about awards or how well a team's robot did. I find this information counterintuitive to the point that should be expressed in this thread.