Oh, but it makes a HUGE difference when there's a face to a complaint. If I created an account to bring up an issue, it would be given a lot less weight than if I had brought it up myself.

Now here's my opinion on this:

I came from a 110% student run team. Want to know where that got me? Kicked off because of a stupid argument. It was stupid on BOTH sides. Here's why: We're high schoolers. We haven't had enough experience to get things right, and our cycle time is too quick to allow true systemic learning. WE MAKE MISTAKES. We haven't been here long enough to get it right the first time. So here's why the programs that are "unfairly" run by mentors are FAR superior: Longevity and consistency. When a team is "mentor run," it will be similar each year. This means a reliable, accurate, and more professional learning environment is present.

Also, if you let a student teach themselves, and teach other students, you end up with products like me: An inspired, ready to learn kid with some basic tools, all built on bad habits and unprofessional methods. If you want to learn how the real world operates, you learn from THE REAL WORLD. You get REAL engineers, REAL programmers, and REAL mentors to come in, and show you how it's done. Once you've got that idea, you're ready to move on and get into the world.

So what do we get when we have all students running a team and competing? A bunch of young hoodlums who know barely anything about how the world works trying to interact and change the world. If you want to make change, you have to know what you're trying to change.

I'm not going to harass you about your points; it's been done enough. However, I am going to say this: Start trading PM's with prominent mentors of those "all mentor" teams, and get a feel for how they work. I might as well throw a few names of programs I respect out there: PM these folks, I'm sure they'd be glad to answer questions. Try Cory, from 254, as a starter. I used to share the same opinion that you had. But then I actually SPOKE to the people on the team, and realized what they had going on, and I was floored. It's an awesome program.

Good luck with the issue at hand, and keep enjoying FIRST! You can only be a student in it for so long....