Quote:
Originally Posted by dlavery
An interesting ethical dilemma - for approximately the same amount of funds, one could send three students from one team on a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime trip halfway across the planet to participate in an additional competition event, or one could provide support for an entire additional FRC team to allow them to participate in the program when they might not otherwise be able to do so.
As much fun and as exciting as a team trip to New Zealand would be, at some point a serious discussion about purpose, priorities, and propriety needs to take place.
-dave
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Dave has it nailed--if a team were to fly in on Thursday and leave late Saturday from such a regional, I'd be inclined to wonder about (but not necessarily condemn) the use of funds. While it might be hard to get all of the value back from the added cost of going halfway around the world, I've seen firsthand the effect of expanding a trip by even a half-day on students who haven't experienced such trips before. TIMS probably ought to make teams ask themselves about how much value they could realize from the trip before they click the Register button for New Zealand.