Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris
wow WPI is reimbursing travel costs... $2,500 scholarship to Chairmans winning students. Some interesting precedents being set by this new regional, can't complain that the university is willing to pump a lot of money into FIRST and the regional. But i'm not sure if reimbursing team travel costs is the best way to do it, it sets a precedent that many (most) other regionals won't be able to match.
I know there are probably regionals struggling to find enough financing to run their regional every year. I would prefer if WPI went more of the NASA route in providing financing to teams, because giving every team attending your regional money to travel to your regional is a big incentive that will lure many teams away from other regionals. I'm not sure if I want this to be allowed, I don't want regionals to have to compete for teams to attend. I would rather have WPI support teams in their area, but not by making teams attend their regional to receive funding.
I know WPI is a big sponsor of FIRST, yes I know WPI supports many local teams. I am just stating that I am not comfortable with them providing financing for teams to travel to their regional, when most other regionals will not be able to do so. Especially when they make it sound like financing will be available to every team.
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Disclaimer: I'm a student at WPI.
Both the WPI Regional and the Northeast Utilities Connecticut Regional (they are only about a 40 minute drive apart) are giving travel stipend grants to teams that apply this year, and personally I have no problems with this idea specifically for these two Regionals or in general for any District or Regional. How is it any different for a Regional to sponsor only the teams that attend their Regional with a travel grant any different than if GM, Ford, NASA, etc. decided to only sponsor teams in towns/cities in which they had facilities? Is this fair to teams a town over?
What this comes down to is sponsors donate money for a specific cause that they would like to see addressed. These institutions want to support teams that come to their events, instead of sponsoring a team to go elsewhere. Northeast Utilities and WPI are both intrinsically regional institutions; you can't buy electricity from NU in Wisconsin or attend WPI courses in Arizona. So if neither of these areas are served by these companies, why does a company/institution have to sponsor teams in these areas?
And in regards to scholarships for the winning RCA team members, how is this any different than colleges offering scholarships for academic talent, sports talent, or any other kind of talent or hard work? If you are valedictorian, you can get scholarships. If you score 1000 points on your high school basket ball team, you'll likely get a scholarship. Winning a RCA is no small task, and takes the entire team working together to do so. As such, why shouldn't the team members' hard work be rewarded with a scholarship? Winning RCA is completely different than winning a Champion trophy.
A Champion trophy can come from two days or lucky match pairings and a lucky second pick into a powerhouse alliance. A RCA takes a year-round effort of hard work of spreading the inspiration and culture-changing nature of FIRST. If anything, this will make teams want to do even more to win a RCA to get s shot at potential scholarships. How would teams doing even more to win an RCA be a bad thing?