[archiver]

Posted by Andy Baker.

Engineer on team #45, TechnoKats, from Kokomo High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 8/3/2000 8:52 AM MST


In Reply to: Is the Chairman's Award fixed? I believe so..... posted by Vinny Bushemi on 8/2/2000 2:47 PM MST:



WARNING: The previous message that you read can cause serious damage to your team.

Vinny and others like you, get over it. Your opinion of unfairness is a fact of life... get use to it.

I can say this from experience. I'll give you a bit of history.

In 1995, our team thought we had a darn good Chairman's Award submission. We thought that it was ours in the bag... no one else could be as good as us. Well, we didn't. We got to be a 'finalist', but that wasn't good enough for us. The leaders of our team were pretty bitter about the whole thing, and demonstrated the same opinions as Vinny has. They vented their opinions, and started some major trouble... kinda like a VIRUS within the team.

Fast-forward to 1998. After two years of below-par FIRST performance and a chronic case of a bad attitude, our engineering leadership had to be re-vamped. Our team went from 40 active students in 1995 to 20 semi-active students. FIRST was starting to be a pain to all involved... no fun and no good.

The old crew had to leave. The root of the badness was the terrible attitude and resentment from the 1995 Chairman's award. The engineering leadership was replaced with a new crew. The old crew was thanked and asked not to help out anymore. To this day, whenever this old crew is asked for advice, they always bring up how they were robbed in '95. I don't even talk to these people anymore about FIRST, 'cause I'm sick of hearing about it.

This old crew even had copies of the winning team's Ch. Award submission. I've got the 1995 copy of Nashua HS - Lockheed Sanders' submission, and they were very impressive that year and soundly beat us. Kudos to them and shame on us.

I'm telling you... get over it. I'm serious. Attitudes like this need not be around impressionable students. Bad attitudes breed like a virus and can destroy a team. This is not gracious professionalism, but more like self-pity, selfishness and whining.

While Vinny's comments do make some try to 'Fix the Chairman's Award', I suggest just moving on.

Andy B.