[Jizvonius]

I would have to say that, for a short while, my high school team had similar issues. Looking back on it now, I would have to say that none of the issues that we had to deal with (barring financial) were as bad as they seemed while I was there. A large part of the inflation of issues such as cliques, opportunities for new members and such was due to the fact that in high school, there are so many issues outside of FIRST that influence people's decisions.

In my old team, motives behind several decisions were misconstrued for many reasons. We built our robot on my friend's porch because that way we could work on weekends/very late nights and not be locked out of our work area. We also had several of the same classes so we could work very flexible hours and study together to make sure that we didn’t fail. However, for new members this made it very hard to even see the robot as they couldn't get transportation. Our robot design was quirky so we only let people who knew the quirks drive it (so basically the builders/people with transportation/seniors & juniors). Combine this with the fact that most people in high school generally have no tact when they feel that they are being treated unfairly, and it turned into a you vs. me vs. them vs. everyone else issue when in reality it was just high school students dealing badly with a bad situation.

I would say that before you go over anyone's head and create further chaos, you should get a meeting together with all of the concerned parties with some objective mediators (Teachers/administrators) to discuss the decisions made this year and the reasons behind them. I sincerely hope that you find that the problems are not rooted in malice. If they are, then remember that the actions taken in response must be appropriate for the individual student’s as well as the team’s wellbeing. Then you can go into solving problems for next year. (BTW I didn’t mention parents as mediators as I have seen some parents being anything but objective when it comes to their children)

Either way, while some of the behavior of high school students is not in the spirit of FIRST, I believe that this is a reality that students will have to deal with at some point in their life. Perhaps some good can come of this as the students learn how to deal with difficult situations when working with people.

Long story short, calm yourself down. Then get together with your team and figure out what has been done, and what needs to be done to sustain/rebuild the team.

BTW 1002 was NOT my high school team (they are my awesome current team) and my high school team has had 5 years since these incidents occured, and seem to be doing well.