[JesseK]

The first involves a good call that a Head Referee overruled me on, and I am criticized for not sticking with my call, even though it was not mine to make. The second involves myself being a Head Referee at an offseason event, as an inexperienced associate referee made a call that went against a team in the final match, then forgot to mention it to me before the score was posted. I was then forced into a decision where I either had to publicly revoke the call, or include the penalty in the match. Under duress and time constraints, I decided on the latter, without the foresight that it would change the outcome of the match, and therefore, the winning alliance.

These events involved the same team...

I think I understand what may be the missing piece here.

The first involves a good call that a Head Referee overruled me on, and I am criticized for not sticking with my call, even though it was not mine to make.

Was it not your call to make in the first place or not your call to try to overrule the head ref on? If the head ref is wrong and you can prove him wrong then why not do it ... not in a challenge of authority sense, but in a 'make the right call' sense? Did you even ask? I'm only asking because if you didn't then it serves as (even illogical) reasoning for bias against you.

The second involves myself being a Head Referee at an offseason event, as an inexperienced associate referee made a call that went against a team in the final match, then forgot to mention it to me before the score was posted

This is easily flipped to be biased against you by saying that you didn't ask the inexperienced referee whether or not there were any penalties. It's particularly egregious due to the timing, regardless of whether or not that aspect is under your control.

These events involved the same team...

And here is why it's all biased against you.

Two calls were made against the same team. That means the MI board of directors is basing their decision off of someone's subjective interpretation of your attitude and the look on your face when you made the calls as well as the timing of the calls. That interpretation attempts to reveal the intent of your calls. If the team your calls were against thought you made the calls out of spite, or were intentionally calling incorrectly for whatever reason, then that's the answer. There's no telling how many letters were written in favor of not allowing you to volunteer in positions that call for possibly subjective judgment in the future. What would you do in that situation if your team had calls made against it in the same manner? Wouldn't you at least write the regional director with the overall agenda of saying "WTF?"?

If such letters exist, then in essence FIRST HQ, being an organization with some sort of chain-of-command, has probably agreed with the MI Board to some degree and will probably not pursue the specific issue or overrule that specific decision, ever. Improving VIMS is their next best option.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any corrective action to take other than to get to know someone on the Board, and enjoy volunteering for what it's worth in the meantime. An apology for public defamation (name-calling in general is bad, yet calling your best advocate 'gutless' is particularly arrogant ...) would probably be in order too. If you can't live with that then like I said before -- you see it differently, but you're the one who has to get over it. That's not a slight to you; it's a general fact of life.

Arefin is completely right. FIRST isn't what it used to be. Nor will it ever be the same again. Power does that. And power can defined in many ways.

FIRST must evolve in order to expand; is that a bad thing? There's all of this assumption of power hungriness without even minute consideration to that what one doesn't know. What's amazing to me is that 4 years ago I could have empathized with this statement and now I can only imagine a little kid sticking his thumbs in his ears so he doesn't have to listen to what he doesn't want to hear. The same principles that work at a small scale of 500 teams and 20 regionals are completely annihilated on the scale of 1600 teams with 40+ regionals. Should the energies of HQ be spent over every squabble or grievance of every team or should HQ delegate those out and focus on bigger picture items, like trying to achieve its goal of inspiring even more kids?