[Josh Hambright]

Okay so going back to what Mike said about being tall. I dont know if one of my experiences would fall into discrimination since discrimination has a negative conotation that goes along with it and my experience wasn't a negative one. But 2 years ago at Sweet Repeat i was chosen by my team to be human player for 2 reasons. 1> I am tall 2> I knew the game and we didn't have alot of experienced people going with us. Basicly when we got to competition it was my first time ever being down on the field and it was a little scary. At first i didn't know what to do but all of the other coaches and human players assumed because i was big they assumed i knew how to play human player and that i had done it before. I ended up being human player in every single match that day including during the finals when we won. Basicly because i was tall and it was easy for me to load over the top of the wall.

Further then that i know i have experienced discrimination because i am A>Big, funny looking, and have strange hair. B> i'm a high school student C>On a team that isn't really known for being that good at the robots side of things. I know that often times when i talk to members of other teams they automaticly make judgements on me because the assume that i dont really know what i'm talking about. Also people often judge my team, partialy i think because we have a midrange number and partialy because we have never had that great of robots. People assume when i go up and start talking strategy that they have it all figured out and that i dont know what i'm talking about. Or when i talk to engineers and I must not have any idea what i'm talking about because i'm merely a high school student.

Further i think there has been in the past alot of discrimination against rookie teams. This years game really allowed the rookies to shine and to be just as good as the double diget teams tend to be. Team number needs to not be a way of judging teams. Team numbers are merely there to make identification and administrative tasks easier but no team should be judge by the number that they were assigned.

Umm so yah there is my rant about this topic.

As far as fixing it, i think that just showing everyone respect is often the best way to avoid discrimination. I try not to judge anyone until i have atleast talked to them, first impressions are more often then not decieving.

there is my 2 cents.