Quote:
Originally Posted by aaeamdar
One last point: though perhaps unwise, I did request personal opinions on the subject. Mostly so far I think we have been fairly reasonable to each other, and let's try to keep that up. Specifically, FreedomForce thinks that FIRST should change its rules and audit teams, and he's entitled to his opinion. I'd also point out that responding to someone saying "mentor run teams do not acheive the goals of FIRST" by saying "well, FIRST does not have a blueprint for how teams run" doesn't make too much sense (to me at least). The first person is suggesting (or seems to be suggesting) that FIRST should have such a blueprint. Responding by telling them that there is no blueprint is not much of a logical point.
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I guess with this entire discussion there is a fundamental idea that have an entirely engineer built robot is bad and eliminates students from the process. I don't personally see what says that this is true, and I do not see where we have the high moral standing to come down on those said teams.
I don't believe an audit system is logistically possible, and I do not believe it is necessary either.
Why is an engineer built robot bad?
Why is an entirely student built robot good?
Where do we have the authority to make these evaluations of other teams?
I just don't understand where it is others place to make these judgments when they have no perspective on the teams inner workings nor how it came to be this way in said teams.
I have been on every style of team rich, poor, student led, mentor led, "engineer built". My thought is that they all worked to inspire at the end of the day. I think we lose perspective and think that this is only a competition of robot building. I wonder if we start thinking in terms of how many people of that FIRST team went to college, how many started their engineering job, and how many of those students are better off after the FIRST season is over. If we start to change this thought process I think that these discussions don't matter as much because they have missed the idea of FIRST when they are discussing this audit.
I wonder could our energy be better served elsewhere? Our time and energy are finite resources that should be used properly. I think that this audit process would be a waste of those things because ultimately it would NOT ensure anything except more paperwork for the already overworked mentors.
I hate to break it to everyone and hopefully people someday will be able to handle this notion that this competition isn't fair. It just isn't, I'm sorry. Just be content that you are doing what you THINK is best approach here in FIRST. You are losing your finite resource of time and energy worrying about what everyone else is doing.