[MissInformation]

Now, to answer the original question, if I had to pick a penalty that I felt was most appropriate, I would choose disqualification. Which should be enforced by FIRST Officials. As far as limits to the penalties go, I'm still stuck on that issue, but surprisingly (to me at least) I'm leaning more toward the penalties being unlimited.

One of my first thoughts when I considered this topic was that there should be some leniency for Rookie teams, after all, they're new and all that. But then I thought, why should that matter? Every team out there has a responsibility to learn the rules every year, regardless of how many years their team has existed.

Let's take a solid example of rule breaking that cannot be disputed, something like modifying a part that FIRST rules state absolutely cannot be modified. If a team does this, should they get off with just a warning? Should they be allowed to make excuses?

Which then makes me think should leniency even be a factor or should there be one consequence across the board for any violation of the rules? The advantage of this is that it would make it a lot easier on the person(s) who would have to decide if a team has broken a rule, plus it may deter someone from breaking what they consider a minor rule. Or should there be a system set up with different consequences for different violations? I like the idea of that, because I really do think some violations are not as bad as others, however, this could be a very time-consuming venture for FIRST Officials (freaky enough, I had a dream once that there was a FIRST Court, complete with judge and jury, that reviewed game violations).

Should a team be kicked out of FIRST? I would think that would be too extreme, however, I can think of plenty of instances where it would be perfectly acceptable to kick a student off of a team. Maybe a team that is a repeat offender in breaking the rules should have to take a year off. And maybe that team should have to come back as a Rookie team... but then, maybe that's too extreme as well.

There will probably always be someone who wants to deliberately bend or break the rules, but if appropriate penalties are created and enforced (enforcement is key here because without enforcement making a penalty is useless), maybe it will get rid of the "accidental" breaking of rules because more time will be spent learning and understanding the rules.


Heidi