[Garret]

My team has struggled with this issue a lot. We have had the policy where we let anyone join the team and be a part of it. That policy turned out to be a problem in that we had a whole bunch of people who would show up maybe once a week or a few times the whole season and then expect us to update them and make it like they had been there the whole time. If the team had sufficient mentors to make that happen I would be glad to accommodate this, however, when you have 35 kids at a meeting and 3 mentors that type of thing is unacceptable.

In addition to this, FIRST offers students a great deal of benefits in terms of applying to colleges and scholarships. I think its unfair that a student who shows up to 1 meeting a week to be given the same opportunities (in terms of scholarships) as the student who has put countless hours of work into FIRST. In my mind that is not fair.

I will add a final point about my own team. My dad was the main administrative, technical, and business mentor (basically the only mentor there all the time) for the past 4 years on team 691. He does all of this during what little free time he has left after doing his regular job, which is being the one-man patent department for a micro-device company. During the build season he has to balance work and an entire FRC team on his own. If a team member expects my dad to be at every meeting, yet they aren't willing to make the program a priority I find it offensive and disrespectful. Its like saying oh, golf is a real team, robotics is just a club.

I apologize if my post is offensive to you (or anyone else), but frankly I am really quite offended by your posts.
(Also your team application you described sounds a whole lot like my teams application)