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Re: Team Corruption - Advice Urgently Needed
@green-paint - Having seen some of these issues in and out of FIRST organizations, I can certainly understand the frustrations you suffer over this. It is apparent that you have tormented yourself with grief over how to deal with the perceived situation.
Please allow me to ask a few questions from the perspective of a devil's advocate, as most issues like these are complex and take a lot of time and interactions to develop. Since you are upset that you waited so long to attempt to address the issues, could it be that there was a breaking point event that moved you to post here? My sense is that the nepotism is perceived because you or someone else not related to a mentor was slighted.
The general theme of your post is that you and other members of your team feel excluded. A good portion of your list involve technical exclusions. Were the responses you got from mentors a terse "No", or were they more along the lines of "show me a working proof of concept, by the end of today", followed by a "No" a few days later when the proof of concept was never produced?
Does your team have a mechanism for your members to log time spent in service to the team? If so, is there any qualitative assessment of the time spent?
Do you have a lot of team members who are "present" but not actually doing anything productive? Do they feel that their time hanging out entitles them to a spot on the drive team?
Have team members adopted an informal seniority system, where they perceive longevity as more important than actual contributions?
On the couples who were treated differently, good or bad; are there other members of the team who are obsessed with any of the individuals who were coupled with someone else?
Do the mentors have a guiding philosophy for the team, and does everyone on the team know what it is? Do you agree with it?
I would ask if you were in California, as one of your points was that certain members were not being required to meet a fundraising requirement. In California, teams attached to public schools (conventional or charter) cannot require any students to meet any financial goal, and must provide for their participation at events. Grades are a different story, but fundraising cannot be a factor. As you want to keep generic, I will only offer this information for FIRST teams in California who read this. Other states may have similar laws.
I don't know how you would answer any of these questions, but when the same questions were asked about similar situations on my team in the past, the answers were more revealing about the complaining parties than the perceived favorites.
My point is that you really need to filter your complaints to see if there is an actionable problem. Quite often when you are close to this type of situation, your emotions damage your ability to see straight and to be truly objective. Sometimes, people with sympathetic ears are manipulated by others into becoming the champions of unjust causes. Sometimes, those who appear to be benefiting from nepotism, really have put in the productive time when compared to those who feel slighted. Be careful.
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