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Originally Posted by teamcrash
EDIT: One of my team members brought up an important point: how do we make things change? These are great suggestions but the more I look at them the more pushback I can think of from the mentors.
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1. Make sure that your school's administration is present and open to hearing what you have to say. In the end, their goal is probably just going to be to end the conflict on your team. If they think that you are just coming in to complain with no good reason, they are probably just going to side with the mentors and treat the meeting as a session to try and calm you guys down. If they think that you have thought through what you are presenting and actually have good goals in mind, they will be more likely to try and end the conflict with a mutual agreement.
2. Make sure you have a clear goal in mind. Making the argument that everything is just bad because the team isn't happy probably won't get you anywhere. Before you go into the meeting, you need to decide what your team's goals are. Typically, for a FRC team, the 2 main goals are to inspire students to pursue a career in STEM and create a culture that embraces science and technology within your community. Some teams will have slightly different goals though, so its up to you to decide. A more concrete goal to talk about is building up a sustainable program that can eventually win the chairman's award (if you haven't already of course). Talking about building competitive robots isn't necessarily bad; the competition aspect of FRC is extremely important. But winning competitions isn't usually a good goal to talk about with the administration if you are trying to get them to approve of sweeping changes.
3. Come in with ways in which the team is specifically holding itself back from achieving those goals, and suggestions on how to improve. People normally aren't receptive if you are just complaining about the problem. They like to hear specific ways in which they could fix it.