[thefro526]

I have a friend on 217 and she pointed me towards this thread and was very offended.

It seems that year after year someone comes out and bashes some well known and successful team for not building their own robot, assembling a robot from parts, blah blah blah. What's people seem to forget though, is that when you bash a team on a Public Forum like this, members of the team can see it. While some stand up and will correct you, many just sit back and get hurt because they feel too biased to counter argue.

So to the Anonymous poster who came out and bashed 217, get to know people on the team and then come back on here and make claims about robots being built however - and when you come back, please use a real name.

Also, I'd suggest that any of the Mentors or Team Leaders out there try to talk to their students about good teams and good robots and try to get rid of the animosity that students seem to have towards these elite team. At one point in time (2006) I would go to competitions as an impressionable Freshman and see good robots with my older teammates. They would instantly say, "You know who built that robot, not the kids" and things of the sort. As I got older, and learned about what building robots takes (I was on the other side of those comments once or twice) I grew out of that school of thought. Now I try to make sure that no student on 816 has that mindset. Sometimes, it seems that students (especially those on student run teams) seem to forget that students their own age can build exceptional robots.