Sean said something like what I want to say, but since he took a different spin on it I'll go ahead and post mine.
FIRST was not founded to change our morals and make us into "better" people; that's been said in this thread numerous times. FIRST's primary purpose always has and always should be to inspire students to participate in a career in science and engineering. That is why teams are formed; that is the idea behind the whole program. That's why we are here.
Now, imagine you're a mentor on a rookie team back when the competition was just starting. You're donating all this time and energy to this program that has the potential to so greatly benefit the students. Are you going to only teach them about science and technology, just that and nothing else? Are you going to look the other way if the students for some reason act less-than-maturely or in a way that's distasteful, rude, disrespectful, or harmful? Mentors generally want to help their students learn and grow, and that really isn't contained simply in learning about the robot and growing in your mechanical or programming skills. If the mentors want to help the students grow in those areas, doesn't it often spill over into helping them grow as people? If you have one, chances are you have the other with it whether you realize it or not. That seems like a simple fact of the way FIRST mentors are: they want to see their students grow in every way possible.
To me, that seems like it's at least partly why FIRSTers are expected to be morally upright and generally good people. I did not say
better people; I said good people. The FIRST community has created a mini-society where it's not acceptable to be rude, dishonest, or a number of other things. That doesn't mean the FIRST community is better than the rest of society and it doesn't mean those things don't still happen. Of course they do; it's part of human nature to be rude when events aren't going our way. But in FIRST more so than in many other groups, it's just plain less acceptable. It's more expected that you act in a graciously professional way.
In sports, you don't generally cut your opponent any slack, and that's expected and perfectly acceptable to pretty much everyone involved. In FIRST, you often see teams helping out teams that need it, knowing full well they'll be competing against each other later. You see teams who damaged an opponent's robot going over to offer to help fix it after the match. You see teams calling a timeout for an opponent during the finals of a regional, teams that are already down by one match. I was lucky enough to not only see that twice this year, but be on one of the two alliances involved both times, once on each end of it. At Chesapeake when it was first suggested that our alliance call our timeout for our opponent, I remember remarking to our driver that it was "the FIRST way to do it." I doubt you will see that in professional sports, because it's acceptable not to do so. That doesn't mean FIRST is better, but it IS different.
FIRST may not have started out to change the way people act, but it has come to symbolize it in a way for many people. Because it has evolved with the idea that Gracious Professionalism should be practiced in all situations, not because that's its purpose. We as a community are not better, we simply are how we are.
My $.02 (although I think that was at least a nickle's worth; I didn't mean for it to be so long...
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