Posted by Erin at 04/13/2001 8:32 AM EST
College Student on team #65, Huskie Brigade, from Pontiac Northern High School and GM Powertrain.
To all posters (esp. those in the Oakland County area)
This morning, my dad came into the room and laid the paper down in front of me and rolled his eyes. He said, "turn to the second page". I thought, well, it can't be anything about FIRST, because they would never put that on the second page of the Oakland Press, 5 days after it happened. Well, I was a bit wrong.
This morning, team 33, the Notre Dame Prep/Avondale Killer Bees here the highlight of the second page. I felt my heart drop to the floor. Don't get me wrong, I love their team- the robot is awesome, their students are nice and they have good engineers. They totally deserved it. However, I was UNBELIEVABLY dissapointed to see the following:
"Three Pontiac teams were finalists for the Chairman's Award. Teams from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems, 3-Dimensional Services and Oakland Technical College (it's actually CENTER, not college, they got it wrong) Northeast, and General Motors Powertrain and Pontiac Northern High School were nominated for the award, which recognizes the overall quality of a team and its' sponsor."
ARGH! That's it?!?! Three teams from one city get that for recognition??
Being one of those people who think the Chairman's Award is the epitome of all awards, I am very disgruntled to see the Oakland Press (which is owned by DISNEY by the way) leave something like this behind. Esp. with one of those teams being finalists twice (1), one of those teams being a former recipient and a finalists twice (47) and one of those teams coming out of a serious transition showing what they are made of and trying to make a bigger impression on their urban high school (65). All they needed to do was care a little more...
I guess it's still all about the robots.
But I am deeply dissapointed.
Erin
p.s. Don't worry, I have scheduled a phone meeting with the editor about this, they will hear it
