[Beth Sweet]

Mr. Lall, I'd like to start out this post by saying that I have a lot of respect for you for not only expressing your opinion, but also for doing so in such an elequent way.

That being said, I disagree with most everything you are saying. You say that you (and I believe the other supporter of the concept was Karthik...) beleive that better than a participation medal would be a 4 year pin. I vehemently disagree with this concept. In fact, I still would not qualify for my 4 year pin as I've been in FIRST for only 3 years. Howerever, I feel that participating in FIRST has been fantastic on me. I know that this season, I distributed the participation medals and my 1-year seniors were so proud that one of them didn't take off his the entire evening. Those medals, while they may not seem like the correct form of reward, mean everything to some people. We worked so hard this year. Those kids were so proud of their achievements.

The way I see it, FIRST participation makes everyone winners, so there's no problem with giving a winner a medal.

I don't know, I just don't like the idea of saying that longevity is a better indicator of FIRST than the effort put forth. Maybe a yearly pin would work well, but I hate the 4 year idea. In 3 years, I feel like I've had more good things happen to me and been more impacted by FIRST than some who were in the program for 4 years that I know.