Bad behavior in the hotels.

[Tiki]

Sorry for posting another thread about not so graciously professional behavior, but I just thought that the situation that I'm talking about is completely different from the other thread and would be considered an irrelevant topic.
At the UTC New England regional (2 weeks ago?), My team was staying at the Crowne Plaza hotel, in, of course Hartford, Conn. When we were there, this kid from another team kept on knocking at our door and running away quickly to his room. My friends fount this very annoying, so whe made a stake out. We caught him and, without violence or cursing or anything meant to harm anyone in anyway, told him to not do any of that immature annoying behavior again and let him go. Of course, his friends ot a little impatient and closed the door on him. We went back to our room and thought nothing of it.
We could hear this kid screaming and pounding the door clearly, he was at the complete other side of the hallway. Some other people called security and they came up there and I dont know what happened after that.

Now, it seems that some people from the hotel or something, are calling my school, and it just so happens that My team may get in trouble, I think it was the other freshmen (who knocked a painting off a wall and broke the glass off of it), but I'm thinking it was this.

This stupid behavior has to stop, I don't think that I should have to suffer because of someone elses misbehavior. We are supposed to be the most intelligent people from the schools we are representing, and even those kids get in trouble.
If I find out my team has to suffer because of another team's wrongdoing, I will take some kind of action.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Tiki

If I find out my team has to suffer because of another team's wrongdoing, I will take some kind of action.

Um, you were saying something about graciously professional behavior?

[Kyle]

There are ways to stop this, Make a list of hotel rules for each student and have them sign them, I know a piece of paper can not stop someone from doing something stupid but it might help. Also on MOE we do an open door policy up till our team curfew, once you get back from a the comp your hotel room door stays open, either the door is held open by something or the dead bolt lock out so the door can't close. This makes it harder for un unruly things can not go un herd in a room. Also there is always an adult or senior/trusted student who should be in charge of keeping the piece.
It is not a perfect system but it has worked for us and we have had little problems in hotels.

I am sorry to hear about what happened in your hotel and I hope that it doesn't happen again to anyone.
On that note I can't wait to see everyone at the Omni in ALT this year again.

[Billfred]

If you know it's someone on another team, ask your mentors to talk to their mentors about it. Surely any group of rational human beings (which FIRST seems to attract) can work this out.

As for hotel rules, I've seen a few. ROTC simply split the sexes (sans chaperone) and taped the doors after X hour. Debate let go on even that much (as long as the door was wide open), with taped doors. It really depends on your school and your students as to what works.

[Brandon Holley]

When a team is given some kind of freedom away from competition, crazy stuff can happen. Most teams relieve some kind of energy in the hotels by doing stupid stuff. I guess for the most part it ends in good terms, but I guess for you guys you caught some bad luck. Hope it works out...


...and remember GP is the way to be

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

I honestly don't understand what happened, but here are a few suggestions...

You need to handle this as responsible and well-behaved as you claim yourself to be. That means you're gonna have to give a little.

1) Get some mentors on your side. To a school board's ears, a student's voice may mean nothing. If you want to share your side of the story, do it respectfully and have backup.

2) Don't be afraid to admit if you could have handled it wrong. You might have, it's impossible to know. Understand that what you do right now will affect your team at home and at competition.

3) Put a different hotel guide system into place...Kyle's sounded effective to me.

Good luck
- Genia

[Kevin Sevcik]

For future reference, this kind of post is probably better suited to the Firstaholics Anonymous Forum.

That said, I don't think your team will get in trouble for the kid. You probably will have to pay for the glass that was broken. In the future, however, you have much better options available to you in these situations. If you have a problem with another team or a teammate acting immaturely and causing problems, then take the mature way out. Call your adults and tell them about it and let them handle it for you. If you're feeling adventuresome, find out what room the kid is from and then call the front desk and tell them about it. There's no need for you to catch the kid yourself and put yourself and your good name at risk. You're actually lucky that the kid just got locked out by his friends. Had you hurt him or something when you "caught him", even by accident and not intending to hurt him, you could be in serious trouble.

So basically, the best way to deal with immaturity is to be the mature one and handle the situation in a sensible way.

[DarMagi]

Being a kid myself, I have to say that these acts are often fun when the victim is someone you know, of course to someone who you don't know how they will react is very bad. There is never anything from with jokes on teammates and friends that you KNOW will take it as a joke. I stress joke because you should know %110 of how they would react to it. Like I said in the other incident, what ever happened to a good clean game of hackey sack? I mean come on... immaturity is bad enough, that was just stupidity.

[Tiki]

Well, in my team now, its kind of taboo to play with and/ or come into any kind of contact with any other member of FIRST who is not on our team. This is because of this one jerk on our team who doesnt do ANYTHING but just sit around and play cards with kids from other teams, and the last person we want to be like is him. When we were in the hotel and were going for our important scouting meeting in one of our rooms, that kid didnt come, instead, he played with the other teams and played halo 2. So, naturally, any kind of interference caused by another team is really not welcome among my team. As a matter of fact, if they find out that I'm actually posting on Chief Delphi, they will probably compare me to the one that i will only call "Andrew".
But anyway, it shoudnt happen again, and its probably because of the glass, and the noise the freshman portion of our team was making. (Yeah Im a freshman, but I bunk with the older kids.)

[Joe Matt]

Psst...

Beyond the khaki's, blue polo shirts tucked in, and orange hats, we have some bad apples. I admit it. But when you lay down what is acceptable and not I find most kids understand and comply with the rules. These rules aren't just to keep our image proper or to stop annoying others, but to show kids there is more to life than mindless jokes and stunts. When we slip up, we all get the smack down, as anyone in Houston knew two years ago when we were all grounded for the night.

0 tolerance policies aren't fun as frosh, but man, they rock when you are leadership.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Well, in my team now, its kind of taboo to play with and/ or come into any kind of contact with any other member of FIRST who is not on our team. This is because of this one jerk on our team who doesnt do ANYTHING but just sit around and play cards with kids from other teams, and the last person we want to be like is him. When we were in the hotel and were going for our important scouting meeting in one of our rooms, that kid didnt come, instead, he played with the other teams and played halo 2. So, naturally, any kind of interference caused by another team is really not welcome among my team. As a matter of fact, if they find out that I'm actually posting on Chief Delphi, they will probably compare me to the one that i will only call "Andrew".
But anyway, it shoudnt happen again, and its probably because of the glass, and the noise the freshman portion of our team was making. (Yeah Im a freshman, but I bunk with the older kids.)

I'm not sure how to reply to this, but I think you're being a tad off topic, and if there's underlying tension on your team with that, it's not totally appropriate to fix on a public forum.

If you need to discipline a member of your team, then do so in private. An individual who doesn't contribute to the team, on most teams, doesn't attend competition.

However, don't seclude yourself. Having an open relationship with other teams discourages behavior like what you experienced. You don't have to distract yourself, in fact you shouldn't, but chances are you'll have to work this issue out with your mentors.

- Genia

[Kyle Love]

I don't know if any of you heard about the 04 Tkat WWE incident. We were at the hotel and some kids thought it would be funny to mess around with eachother. To make a long story short. A kid ended up getting thrown into a wall...leaving a big crack. They did the right thing and went straight to a teacher and admitted they did something wrong. They weren't in a fight or anything, it was just horseplay, gone bad. Hopefully, we don't have a replay of that this weekend, I think we all learned from that experience.

[Koko Ed]

Every year I'm witness to (or hear about) some sort of "inappropriate" behavior at the hotel between competition. Whether it's kids pitching luggage off the balcony to teammates below, or hitting on young teachers in a rude manner on the elevator, to having a "hypothetical" question presented to me by a student about buying porn on a school trip.
Kids are prone to crazy things. We had security called on our kids and all they were doing was going door to door to each others rooms and knocking before they entered (obviously the guy hates kids).
One thing we make clear to our kids is we will not tape their doors or put pennies on them or anything like that. As our old lead mentor Gene Wicks simply put it "If we have to do that we won't take you." Just because they're kids doesn't mean they aren't accountable for their actions and that need to be made clear upfront so problems are avoided and embarrassment are avoided or something worse.
Remember when you are on the road you are not just representing yourself but your family, your school,your community, your sponsors, and FIRST itself and all of those can be forever tarnished because of "harmless fun"
It's just not worth it.

[BaldwinNYRookie]

Teenagers left unsupervised in a hotel room are like freshman in college. They feel it's somewhat of a dorm, and being out on their own for what may be the first real time, they excercise their freedom. But at least they aren't throwing keg parties.

[IMDWalrus]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Well, in my team now, its kind of taboo to play with and/ or come into any kind of contact with any other member of FIRST who is not on our team. This is because of this one jerk on our team who doesnt do ANYTHING but just sit around and play cards with kids from other teams, and the last person we want to be like is him. When we were in the hotel and were going for our important scouting meeting in one of our rooms, that kid didnt come, instead, he played with the other teams and played halo 2. So, naturally, any kind of interference caused by another team is really not welcome among my team. As a matter of fact, if they find out that I'm actually posting on Chief Delphi, they will probably compare me to the one that i will only call "Andrew".

This may sound a bit harsh, but that's not remotely normal.

The best part of FIRST is meeting new people and forming friendships and relationships that could last for years, if not a lifetime. Completely denying that to your team doesn't seem fair to me. If I didn't have the opportunity to get to know other people, I wouldn't be in FIRST. It just wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

Beyond that, being forced to be in a relatively small group for a long period of time can lead to stress and some major team issues. I've learned that one firsthand.

Don't let one or two kids spoil it for everyone else on your team.