[JVN]

You asked for personal opinions, here are some of mine:

If I had re-joined my HS team as a college student, I would NOT have made the transition from student to mentor effectively. I can say that with some measure of certainty. That would have been partly due to me having trouble shifting my paradigm, but also partly due to the other mentors not being able to shift their paradigms either.

I will never recommend ANY student participate as a full-time mentor on a team in college. I strongly believe that college time is better spent focusing on academics, and getting into non-FIRST related trouble. If a student wants to stay involved they can volunteer at a regional.

That said, if a student DOES want to get involved in a team, I hope they would do it in a part time manner such that they could put their academics and other pursuits first. NO MAJOR COMMITMENTS. Working on a FIRST robot is a slippery slope. It becomes tooooooo easy to say "I'll blow off studying for this test because we NEED to finish the robot. I'll catch up on my studying after ship date." This is obviously 100% unacceptable, and yet it is an easy thing to convince yourself is "ok" in the heat of the 6-weeks.

If one of my former students asked to come back and join our team, I would do everything I could to talk them out of it. However if they still wanted to be involved I would be supportive, while continuing to push them to maintain a healthy balance.

I greatly sympathize with the mentors of the team described. There is no right answer here. I've had extremely positive experiences with returning students, and I've had extremely negative experiences with returning students. I've seen extremely great examples from doing FIRST in college, and I've seen extremely BAD outcomes from doing FIRST in college. This is a case by case thing, but the team may require a "blanket" policy in the interest of "fairness".

If this team is going through a rocky a patch (as described), I can see why the mentors would issue a blanket "no returning students" policy. There are many situations where I can see how eliminating even a single additional "complication" would make my life easier as a mentor or could be the difference in the program continuing or folding.

On the flip side... a returning student is still somewhat a student. Letting them back on the team provides additional opportunities to continue to mentor them. There are cases where returning students need the team WAY more than the team needs them. It may not matter if they help the team, if the team can help their continued development. Again... sometimes this continued development will NOT be helped by returning. "Fly free little bird... find your own path in life..."

Okay... enough rambling.
To summarize, there is no right or wrong answer here. I personally sympathize with the mentors in that if they decide to bar returning students there are probably good reasons for doing so (I've rambled about some potential ones, above.)

If the anyone wishes to discuss further, I'd be happy to do so. Just shoot me a PM. Hopefully my (semi-coherent) thoughts on the subject provide some sort of help...

Regards,
John