[alipdx]

I am a team parent and I was very disappointed that during opening ceremony at Championship, the male winners of the Dean's List award received hand shakes and the female winners received hugs. I found this extremely disrespectful to the women and very unprofessional. I wrote to FIRST about it and received this completely unacceptable excuse:

"...What could not be seen on the screen or from the stands was that nearly all of the young women award winners approached the stage with jubilation and tears of joy. From that perspective, the response of these three caring gentlemen seemed appropriate..."

I was actually in disbelief when I read this. The "caring gentlemen" were justified to comfort the emotional women by hugging them? Plenty of the young men I saw "approached the stage with jubilation," yet they were not hugged.

I'm not sure what to do from here. I was hoping for a much better response like...Thanks for calling that to our attention, we will amend that policy immediately and treat all genders equally, since that is what we advocate for in our programs.