[JamesBrown]

Alright, up until this point I was just reading and waiting to hear the details from a team member or mentor, now that we have I would like to start out by pointing out that 842 is not suggesting that every one leave the male members of their The goal of FIRST is to introduce people to Science and Engineering with the hope of guiding them to a related career. If you read either of the 842 mentor’s posts you will see that that was why they did this and that they believe it worked. Because of long held prejudices the ratio of Males to Females in Science and Engineering is no where near 1:1, in order to counteract 100's of years of prejudice in the field it is pretty obvious you can't just say well if you want to do this then you can. It is necessary to introduce people directly to engineering. Do a search for summer engineering programs and you will find many for girls. Almost every major engineering school holds an open house or other events for just girls (as well as for minorities and other under represented groups). These types of intervention are necessary in many cases.

If your team has no need to do this then don't but please don't tell these guys that exposing parts of the team to engineering because those members hadn't had enough opportunity is against the spirit of FIRST because quite frankly it is not.