[Amanda Aldridge]

Originally posted by Cory

To sum it all up:

It is very demeaning to only value girls because they are "hot" value them for who they are: people just like us who love robotics. There is a lot to be learned from each other.

Bravo!

On our team last year, girls and guys were as equal as they could get. This year, while i'm not sure of the exact numbers, I do know that more than half of our returning members are girls, and that out of 22-25 people (i live in a bubble...i'm still not quite sure how many people are on our team this year sorry) there are at least 10-12 girls. As for what girls do on the team, the answer is simple: everything. That doesn't mean that the boys do nothing, just that girls aren't limited to typically female roles, or told that they cannot do anything simply because they are girls.

Originally posted by maDGag

i asked to exclude the PR, because it pertains to liberal arts more than engineering

It pertains to FIRST. Men can be interested in Liberal Arts and Women can be engineers. That is the worst example of stereotyping I've seen in a long time.

Personally, I am heading up the Chairman's Report and Woodie Flowers Award, and I am also working on the website. No, I do not build. The reason is not that I am a girl, but that I have a pathological fear of power tools (don't ask!), and I can't hammer straight to save my life. My input to actually building the robot is limited to possibly filing the rough edges off of some aluminum, but that is a personal choice.

There are several girls on our team who help with the building, and our programming team is a girl and a guy. Elyse, one of our veteran girls, is our "floater", meaning that she works with whichever crew needs her. In one day, she can be seen in the shop working with the build crew on the chassis, then with the electrical team to wire that chassis, and then in the computer lab designing flyers for our annual spaghetti dinner.

Girls and guys on our team have always (as long as i have been on the team) been about equal. We have girls who build, and girls who don't, and we have guys who build and guys who don't. Everyone has their role, but those roles are not determined by stereotypes.

Okay, I've rambled long enough. I'd better stop before I get kicked off the boards for "boring everyone to tears."

Good luck everyone!