[ChuckDickerson]

Unfortunately, I think we may be seeing the beginning of the end for FIRST. All of these problems are due to the overwhelming success of FIRST. It is just starting to get too big. As the number of teams continues to grow these sorts of issues become compounded. As much as we all want to see FIRST in every school in the World I think that ultimately FIRST is going to be a victim of its own success. The whole concept worked when there were hundreds of teams, not thousands.

For the adult team members (teachers, engineers, mentors, etc.):
Is it just me or are any of you at least mildly insulted by this new rule? We teach our students safe shop practices. While they are under our supervision they are “our” kids. We love them, teach them, and would do anything to protect them. We don’t want to see them injured anymore than FIRST does, but, we don’t want to see them injured because we know and love them. FIRST doesn’t know them like we do. FIRST just doesn’t want to see them injured for fear of a lawsuit. They are smart kids. They can design, build, and test a robot with very limited resources after all. Now FIRST tells us that they either don’t have enough faith in us to teach the students properly or the students are too dumb to get it? I find that somewhat insulting. Nobody is perfect. Accidents happen. But shouldn't WE know who can and can't operate particular power tools on our team better than anyone?