Chairman's Award Concerns

[Jedward45]

First things first, I'd like to congratulate team 1816 on another Chairmans Award! The team has always been inspirational for Minnesota teams and is always very gracious and professional while doing so. I hope nobody miss-construes what i am about to say as being anything less than proud of their accomplishments.

That said, over my 7 years of experience in FIRST, there are some things I have observed about chairmans that are beginning to trouble me.

The first concern I have is that teams may be stretching the impact and scope of their outreach. While I originally wrote off these as harmless mistakes of leaving out inconvenient details, I have now observed teams creating very misleading testimonies about their experiences. In some cases, teams have implied their participation in an event was equivalent to creating that event, usually by putting it within a list of other events they created.

I now must admit I have observed this occurring to my team's projects, and as such I may have lost objectivity on discussing this problem. As such I would like to know if any other teams have had similar experiences to mine or not.

However, even if I were to write off all of these concerns as paranoia (and trust me, I really wish I could; many of these teams have gained my respect and admiration over the years), there is something even more troubling. Several very veteran teams have begun measuring their impact on FIRST by measuring the impact of the teams they once helped to mentor. At best this is misleading, implying a connection can be drawn between helping a team begin and what new team members do years later. At worst this could become a pyramid scheme, where the oldest teams can always claim the work of younger teams as their own, appearing vastly more influential in spreading FIRST.

All of these concerned are compounded by what I believe to be an inability of checking the validity of statements. As far as I am aware, teams have always been trusted to be gracious and professional in reporting their team truthfully. While I like this system, I think its reasonable to say nobody is perfect and we are all susceptible to over-estimating ourselves. However, I think teams that are truly gracious and professional would want someone to remind them when they have deviated from the core ideas of FIRST in order to win an award.

Please let me know if you've shared similar experiences or have an alternative explanation for what I have observed. As stubborn as I know I can be, this is one thing I really hope I am wrong about.