Quote:
Originally Posted by Libby K
This is so true.
What scared the hell out of me was the snippy answer to "How many FIRST Alumni are on the BoD?" and resulting followup. It's unfair that the decisions that affect our community most are being made by those who don't know what the community is truly like. It's one thing to visit teams and talk with them, but another to live and breathe the team for months at a time, if not the entire calendar year.
On top of that, the 'we can't poll thousands of people' rationale just doesn't make sense to me. You have a Hall of Fame. You have the Championship WFA's. Use those as a focus group - you've identified them as being the best people and programs in FIRST, so why not use them?!
I'm still trying to digest my thoughts on this one, but so far - not at all fair to teams, and not at all happy with it. I'm very glad FIRST at least made an attempt to open the door with discussion... but they certainly did not handle it well at all.
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I'm really glad you said most of what I was thinking here so I didn't become unhinged trying to get the point across. My experience in FIRST this year can attract a variety of adjectives, but the three I'll use a lot in the coming days as I gather my thoughts are bizarre, baffling, and absurd. I find the extreme contrast between the words of the FIRST founder on alumni and FIRST's actions with alumni bizarre. I find the shunning of alumni who actively participate in FIRST to be baffling. I find the behavior of some FIRST personnel at the town hall towards alumni actively participating in FIRST absurd.
I work with this program because of how much it meant to me as a student. I've made sacrifices that on the surface seem pretty idiotic, but it's all for a program that I like to think has had my back and cares about the contributions I make to it. Well, I liked to think that.