[George A.]

I do feel for your story, and I appreciate the fact that you are taking the bulk of the responsibility.

Before I continue, I should point out that it wasn't the Judges that disqualified you. They are just there in their blue shirts to decide the recipients of the awards.

That being said, there are several places where this fell through the cracks.

1) the inspectors should have caught this when you went through inspections on Thursday, the fact that they didn't catch it is a little suspect. Secondly, if you were selected to the eliminations, you should have had to be reinspected on Saturday afternoon. Hopefully this is where you learned of your infraction (and not as you were placing your bot on the field)

2) the referees should have caught this as well. They should know the rule books and what is allowed (to a certain extent, we can't have them inspecting every robot before every match)

3) As soon as you learned of your infraction, you should have brought it to the attention of the inspectors and find out why they passed you with what appears to be an illegal design?

Like I said, it's unfortunate that this incident happened to you, and I do applaud you for stepping up to the plate. However the question should really be, why did you have to get DQ'ed before the ELIMS and not in the two days leading up to this.