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Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil
100% ABSOLUTELY, is punishment the way to go. It does no one any good if we find that team 12345 won the Championship illegally and are required to fix a problem on their robot after the fact.
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Alright, touché. Then again, it's not like we could take back a Super Bowl title from a team that somehow cheated, either. Sometimes the bad guys win, and the only thing you can do at that point is make sure it never happens again.
The solution to your problem, Mike, is to keep it from becoming a problem. Inspecting everything would solve the problem, but that takes manpower and time. The easiest, and probably best, way to do it is to work on the honor system...sort of.
Consider back in my elementary school days. I was on an Odyssey of the Mind team. And every year at the competition, every student on the team would have to sign some piece of paper that said my team did not receive any outside assistance from non-team members (which was prohibited under the rules). Surely some sort of document could be fashioned for FIRST, where every team member signs to affirm that they were not party to any cheating. If all else fails, you're teaching an important lesson--read everything you sign!