Yeah, about a
year ago, I posted something kinda like this (although in a completely unrelated thread).
Summarized, although not sounding as elitist (which I didn't mean):
- FIRST wants what may be a contradictory set of goals: expand to every high school in the US, and still keep its unique flavor (epitomized by "gracious professionalism").
- If you expand to every high school in the nation, you're going to bring in the bad as well as some good. The mere existence of this thread proves that despite Dean's and Woody's best efforts, this is unfortunately the case.
- If you don't bring in new people, you become a exclusive society of elitists (think popular snobbish-society or ivy-leage-school stereotypes).
So, the question is this:
how do you strike a balance?
I think the problem is the veterans are looking for FIRST to be a utopia, while the word 'Utopia' literally means 'nowhere.'