[Jak DiGriz]

Wow, Sandragg, our team had a really similar experience this year! We had some 25 or so members last year, and only one was a girl. This year the mentor wanted to sort of equalize the gender balance and practiced affirmative action, which is pretty dumb and would not be tolerated in the working environment (There were a number of well, more than qualified male applicants wishing to be exposed to the world of engineering, and their dreams were denied for the "greater good" of balancing the genders... and by the way most of the girl applicants were not voluntary applicants. Rather, the mentor pressured them into joining. Oh well, I guess it's ok to practice gender-biased acceptance).

So, all of the veterans who graduated and went off to college were replaced mostly by female rookies. We got only 1 new male rookie, and maybe 9 female rookies. Is it possible that suddenly all the males became idiots and couldn't fill out an application for robotics? I don't think so. Affirmative action.

Hey, and I'll state two facts:

1. This year we had maybe 25 members, maybe 10 of which were female.
2. We had more internal team communication/management/fabrication problems than EVER BEFORE.
3. Our robot didn't get finished, we had to scrap a crapload of stuff, and basically a lot of stuff never got done.

You put 2 and 2 together.

Now, DON'T GET ME WRONG. I'm all about women in robotics... in fact some of the greatest engineers were women! What I am NOT ABOUT is practicing non-EOE style employment with gender-bias! IT IS AN INSULT TO FIRST ROBOTICS to do this. If a female wants to join a FIRST team, the bar should not be lowered to let her in (as in our situation). She should demonstrate the same qualities and meet the same requirements as the next applicant, male or female.

Now, Sandragg, how were your girls accepted? Did they get any special acceptance treatment?

-A supporter of Equal Opportunity Employment