Quote:
Originally Posted by Holtzman
I attended the Einstein Weekend with Eric Mech, one of our graduating seniors. Eric never left the school before 9pm this season. He was our lead programmer and poured his heart and soul into the team. All the teams on Einstein were brought together and told about the FCA attacks at a meeting on Sunday morning of the Einstein weekend. We were told that FIRST had evidence that our robot was specifically targeted and disabled. I raised my hand and asked what evidence they had, and then Frank Merrick told me that the person had openly admitted to it. I got up and had to leave the room. I was furious. Eric stayed, and handled the news a lot better than I did. He graduates this year not knowing of what we could have achieved.
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Thank you for posting this. This personal account is just an example of how one person and one team was affected by this, and it's heartbreaking. The person responsible for this owes, at the very least, a personal apology to every single team that made it to Einstein this year. You not only made FIRST look bad, you took away something that in all likely-hood these students, mentors, teachers, parents & sponsors will never get back - a fair shot at winning the 2012 Championship.
I really wish the reason behind all the issues were purely related to technological failures, because we can fix those. This is a people issue. People are much harder to fix. I'm encouraged after reading the report that the technology-aspect of this competition will improve for next year's season. Let's strive to improve as people and as a community as well. No one should have to go through what these teams went through ever again.