[Matt H.]

I feel very conflicted posting on this thread. When I became club president this year one of my agenda items was female participation. Perhaps one of the things I most quickly learned was that simply encouraging people to go for it and to be involved does very little in terms of results. I could tell the boys to let the girls have a hand in the projects or encourage the girls to find their own projects, but eventually the girls would inevitably end up in our business area rather than the fab shop.

I found that the best way to remedy this was to simply get a group of girls tell them I needed a part built in x hours and that was their job. When given a "trial by fire" such as this they would excel and doing as such has helped them to become more integrated members of the team. Carl Hayden has taken this philosophy to the next level by having a girls only regional. Having seen those girls I also admired how quickly they learned and improved upon the robot in the pits.

On the converse side of the argument I am very strongly against affirmative action and would prefer to see something along the lines of regulating the boys out of the pits or off the drive team for one regional. This I believe would be a much fair way to achieve the same effect.