[Jon Stratis]

Before I add to the discussion, I want to add a disclaimer: I have not formed any personal opinion on this situation. My team wasn't there, although I was down there volunteering in Newton, so I got to know many of the teams and individuals there.

After alliance selection, while we were finishing re-inspecting robots, I was approached by 4 separate individuals from 4 different Newton teams. And inspector I know on Galileo was approached by two teams as well. They all had the same story to tell: they were told the robot was broke and not to pick them. When they were then selected as the 16th pick, there was a HUGE feeling from those individuals and their teams that it was an extremely ungracious situation, and those individuals wanted to complain about it.

Personally, I would really appreciate a statement from 217 concerning the situation. Some effort should be made to explain it directly to those teams from their division, and smooth over any negative feelings. Something like this could fester and hurt a teams image, regardless if everyone really knows what happened or not.

Edit: looks like Paul chimed in while I was writing my post.