[Chris Hibner]

I've always viewed the competitions as the reward for the weeks of long work. It is my philosophy that if you don't do the work, you don't deserved the reward. Simple as that.

Our team has an 85% attendance rule - if you don't participate with the team activities 85% of the time, you cannot go to the competitions. That 85% only counts the scheduled time (i.e. it doesn't include the extra hours during crunch time). Therefore, if one of the students misses more than 15% of the scheduled time, the student can make up for it by working extra hours during crunch time.

To summarize, if I were in your shoes, I would tell the person that you're sorry but a minimum effort is required during the build period and that effort wasn't met.

In the future, I would suggest setting down some rules and guidelines in writing. Rules and guidelines seem much more fair to people if they know what they are up front. That way, when the person didn't meet the guidelines, they have no excuses, like "but I didn't know...".