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Unread 13-03-2005, 09:10
Eugenia Gabrielov's Avatar
Eugenia Gabrielov Eugenia Gabrielov is offline
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FRC #0461 (Westside Boiler Invasion)
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Re: Harassment in the pits

Like others who've posted before I think it's really important to differentiate between random events and harassment.

I am of the "free hugs" sign variety. However, in my personal opinion, that is more of an in the stands thing. I wore a sign in the pits last year at Nats because I didn't bother taking it off, but I got approached first as a general rule by people I didn't know who weren't busy in their pits. If my friends or I were looking for people whom we owed shirts, we generally just asked if it was a good time to trade and if it wasn't, that was fine too. So keep in mind that some people will be polite.

As far as the actual harassment issue, here are a few ways to handle it maturely:

1) You are here to work on your robot. Your priority is to be here and work on your robot. Or cheer for your team. If your priority was to pick up girls you would be in the stands doing so. I understand it's tough when you're shy in person and don't want to really offend someone and cuase scene, but sometimes its simply effective to tell someone to back off and that you're not interested.

2) If it's one person repeating it, their behavior reflects negatively onto their team. Inform them of that politely. That would be the most effective way to express unhappiness with their behavior in my opinion.

3) There's a lot of people out there who just want to spread happiness, give handouts, and meet friends. As a girl who enjoys giving out free hugs on a purely platonic basis, I can advise you that it is generally easy to tell the difference between harassers and average outgoing FIRSTers. I've never started a long-term relationship at a robotics competition, and I don't plan to, because I personally do not believe that a weekend, no matter how emotionally inspiring it is, is grounds to create a bond that lengthy.

4) If you think it's harassment it's harassment. If you have friends with the same problem, casually mention that you find the individual annoying, and ask them to help you deal with it if he or she comes back.

On behalf of myself and others, I'm very sad to see that you've had that sort of experience. It happening once in your FIRST career is really painful and obnoxious. Good luck in dealing with it in the future.
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