[Anne Shade]

More so than ever, the FIRST organization has been stressing the fact that we are out to change the culture, that this is not just about building robots. The problem is that the judges brought in to judge us on our progress in that goal of changing the culture are from the general public and therefore have very little understanding of what FIRST is all about (with a few exceptions, but they are few and very far between). The judges should not be using some of the statistics found in the yearbook page to make their decisions but many of them do because it is available to them. Many judging decisions at competitions are made based on the wrong criteria and it isn't really the judges' faults. How can we expect someone to come in for a day and a half and understand what FIRST really is as well as judge all the teams at their events based on those principles? How can these judges who don't understand even the most basic of principles of what FIRST is judge one team versus another? They do the best they can with what they know. Some look at the numbers they see on the yearbook page. Some choose the team with the coolest giveaway. Some pick based on a catchy name or logo.

What should be changed is how these judges are trained. If they have the proper resources available to them to make their difficult decisions based on the proper information, we'd all be better off.