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Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil
FIRST is in a real bad situation.
They intentionally make the rules vague so they can bend them at any time. They claim the rules should be followed with common sense rather than a judicial sense.
Gracious professionalism keeps us all looking the other way if a team breaks the rules. To the point where we'll allow a team to break a rule and then compete agaisnt them knowing they broke a rule. Why don't we tell anyone? Because you're supposed to be GP. If you were to tell, who would you tell? There should be a FIRST police officer, but there's not.
FIRST has been designed from the ground up without a set of checks and balances. There are no consequences for breaking the rules. FIRST just hopes people will be honest, a blind faith if you ask me.
Teams will continue bending and breaking the rules, gracious professional teams will continue looking the other way.
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Engineering is built on ethics. There will always be people who have problems with being ethical and will make FIRST look bad. FIRST can keep innovation and give us so much freedom in our design and tighten down the rules for those that can't follow them too. We all know when someone is breaking a rule. You have several options:
1. Approach them, they may not know the rule or there may be a misunderstanding. FIRST has a lot of updates and like has been said before everyone gets tired by the last week and may have missed that update. A lot of teams will be glad to change to be within the rules if they know they have broken them. I know this can be hard but will generally be the best way.
2. If they blow you off you can approach a FIRST official. They are your police. They are there to make sure things go as smoothly and fairly as possible. They will look into it and make a judgement, whether it is correct in your thoughts they hold the final judgement like the refs do. At least here you can get it off your chest and feel better that you did all you could to create a fair playing environment.
3. Ignore it. Rules are enacted for certain purposes. Sometimes there are exceptions to the rules. On that note I want to say how much I appreciate the sportsmanship of 498, 696, and 80. Allowing someone compete even outside the rules is awesome. This also came up when a team from BAE regional took a part offsite to drill one hole (they didn't know they were breaking a rule). Sometimes people get over-penalized if they are held to the rules. It takes real Gracious Professionalism to let these rules slide in these exceptions.
4. There are many cases in what someone is doing isn't illegal but just wrong in a ethical standpoint. Collusions were an example of this. To counter this the best measure is to post opinions here on CD and get a general consensus on what the group feels and what actions need to be taken. You may have groups that don't agree and still have problems with it afterwards but you must take steps to convince people that even some things that aren't "illegal" are wrong.
There may be other options, including the FIRST forum and by making decisions to not associate, but these are the main ones. I beg you to be both gracious and professional when you approach teams and people about this. The whole if you accidentally did something illegal, I'm sure a lot of you have, and someone else approaches you. So be nice.
And for all of you thinking about bending rules out there. Your reputation lies on how you do things. This professionalism part definitely applies here.
Play by the rules and be nice and we'll all have a lot of fun.