[srjjs]

Although I support the totally open approach that some teams have, some schools/teachers (such as our own) have problems with this sort of ambiguitiy and lack of an official decision as to whether a certain person is on the team or not. In my opinion, the restrictions are understandable (a robotics competition is pretty much a four-day weekend, and if someone who has no intention of going decides that they're suddenly "on the team" despite not having expressed any interest before...), and I've concluded that the spirit of FIRST is not significantly hurt from that.
What I think does hurt, however, is a sort of elitism that develops if membership is restricted to people who are declared "more qualified." I can see not expending limited resources (maybe not everyone will be able to attend natinoals), but everyone should be exposed to FIRST in some way or another, whether they're "on the team" or not.