[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Aidan S.

I don't think it would be feasible to employ a lottery system to allocate seats, simply on the fact that a team's needs differ so greatly at a competition. These points have been brought up previously in the thread, but I wish to re-iterate them. Some teams bring 10 people to an event, some bring more than 100. How can we equally divide up seats when teams do not have equal needs?

An allocation method isn't a lottery--it's systematic. If the formula is well known, teams will shift their needs. Also, setting up a trading system where teams can trade their seating requirements will solve the problem of differing needs.

Originally Posted by Aidan S.

In general, teams don't want to be split up at an event, hence the rush to grab seats at the beginning of the day. But I think most teams are successful in adhering to the rules that FIRST outlines for seating allocation. When we send a crew of students early to sit in the section we would like, we never stop other individuals form sitting there alongside us, rather we welcome them to join us. The main issue here is people not understanding the policy that FIRST has outlined.

You're attitude is great if other teams also had that approach. Unfortunately, that's not the case, as we encountered with several large teams this year. The problem seemed to be the worst with the parents who didn't really have any other role than to spectate or cheer (students were generally more accommodating). It's time to consider splitting up the larger teams at the competition if that's what it takes. It's already inconvenient moving in an out of the stands past these large groups. As far as adhering to FIRST rules, there is no seat saving under current rules, so none of these teams are adhering to the rules.

Originally Posted by Aidan S.

The race for seats in the morning has become an aspect of the competition. The competition starts when the doors to the venue open, not when opening ceremonies start or the first match is played. In St. Louis, the doors opened at 7am, so that's when the entire team arrived.

Since when is the race for the seats another aspect of the competition? FIRST's stated policy is clearly and obviously trying to discourage this.

Originally Posted by Aidan S.

Allocating an area for scouting is unfeasible simply because of the diversity of how teams scout. Some teams take 20+ students to scout an event, some take 2, some take none. Some scout by watching matches, some talk to teams in the pit, some do both. Since the amount and type of scouting a team does is so dependent on the team itself, I doubt that there is an accurate way to allocate the correct amount of seats at an event to accommodate everyone. At some events, 100 seats will be far too much, and at others, 100 seats won't accommodate more than 5 teams.

No team has a 100 person scouting system--those teams would split into a scouting section and a spirit/spectating section. I think an initial allocation of 10 seats per team should be sufficient. As I mentioned above, the allocations could be tradable so smaller teams could give up their seats to teams that need more.

Originally Posted by Aidan S.

You bring up the topic of spirit as a non-necessity of team function. I am going to have to disagree with you on this point. I can only speak for experience from my own team, but for us, there is no distinction between spirit and scouting (or any other division for that matter). On the contrary, our scouts are probably the loudest supporters of our team when they are on the field. Our students take great pride in cheering on our drivers when they are in the midst of a match, and telling individuals sitting in a dedicated "scouting section" that they can't cheer on their team because it is distracting to the other scouts will only result in two outcomes: either the scouts will continue to cheer as they did before, ignoring the new rule, or they will simply choose not to sit in the "scouting section" and join the rest of their team.

Spirit is important for promoting the event, but it isn't important to specific function of a team. Our scouts cheered, but they didn't spend time dancing or fun activities. They were scouting mostly. I'm sorry, but I saw several large teams pursuing the spirit award where most of the members weren't scouting (and in at least one case it was the parents who were spending most of the effort on chasing the spirit award.) I think the spirit award is a fun way to promote the event, but those working on that don't need to be integrated with the scouts. I don't see cheerleaders sitting the press box at a football game with the coaches.

Originally Posted by Aidan S.

Now, I do agree that there needs to be a solution for seating for the general public. I think that this can be achieved by roping off a section of seats for people who are unaffiliated with teams and just want to take in the action. It's generally pretty easy to tell who is on a team and who is a spectator, and this would be easy to enforce.

I don't think its as easy as you might think to distinguish spectators and team members. However, FIRST probably can give spectators tickets for the special section.

Originally Posted by Aidan S.

In short, I believe that we shouldn't allocate everyone the same seating space at events, because, since our needs as teams are so diverse, there is no way to make everyone happy with this type of system. The system we have now works, as long as everyone clearly understands what the rules are.

The point of these posts is that the current system is NOT working. We're trying to propose a better solution. The tragedy of the commons is common, but there's also good solutions. But it means disrupting those who are comfortable with the current system, and they are always the most resistant. As I mentioned above, there's a means of setting up a clearinghouse to trade seat allocations so differing requirements can be accommodated. (And each team could bring a receipt showing that they made the trade.) The bottom line is that not everyone does understand the current rules and those rules are (un)enforced in uneven ways. The fact is that the current rules are impractical due to the extensive scouting that has developed.