Quote:
Originally Posted by topgun
It's intrusive to have a free/reduced lunch question on this form. This isn't something I need to know and it isn't something that FIRST needs to know.
They have always had the race/ethnicity questions at the team level, where I as the Lead Mentor could simply put in the counts or not. Same for gender.
What value does this provide? We take any and all students that want to be part of a team that does cool stuff centered around robots. I don't care about their race, gender, lunch status and neither should FIRST. The only thing FIRST truly needs is the second page that absolves them of liability.
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They should care about it so they can track the demographics of the students they're affecting and work to make up for the "holes" in their program. FIRST would be a really crappy program if it only served the needs of middle-to-upper class white boys, but if they don't know that they're only serving the needs of those people then they don't know they need to fix it. Additionally, that information is useful when applying for grants or "selling" the program to new sponsors and partnerships. I don't understand why this makes you uncomfortable. Gender, race, and economic status affect your students' life experiences and how they perceive things... you probably should care.
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Thank you for making this guide! I'll be passing it along to my team to hopefully speed up the process of getting our students registered!