Should Chairman's Winners Be Required to Publicly Post Essays?

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I can think of only one potential negative result of sharing a Chairman's Award essay:

Some people will publicly critique, nitpick, or otherwise complain about what a team says it does. This could include accusations of exaggerating or even inventing details. Even if such accusations are without merit, they would still cast shadows over the process.

Though I doubt that would be enough to detract from all the potential positives, I'm still leaning toward leaving things as they are. It seems to me that the teams that truly deserve to be emulated already share their essays.

You bring up an interesting point, Alan!

I haven't written my opinion yet, but this is a big part of it, so I'll throw in another question:

Would the thought of making essays publicly available discourage teams from bending the truth, reduce exaggerations, or in general, create a system of checks & balances? I read a thread on here a while ago about a team discussing something similar to this that made me think about this type of situation. Do people in FRC think that teams who win/submit Chairman's already have the decency to avoid things like this? What about if a student is submitting/writing an award and just doesn't know all aspects of the type of work their team has done in the community? How can it be ensured a student doesn't pass along false information/exaggerations to the judges? (In general, this is the tougher part of the question, in my opinion). Should teams have to present visual evidence of all events/services to judges?

Would teams reading these essays be rude and harass a team about something that is written in an essay, or would they calmly ask questions in private?

Originally Posted by ebarker

If you are submitting for Chairman's, the you are publicly declaring your team to be a role model. What you do, how you act, how you accomplish your work should be visible to all.

....

Someone please correct me but I vaguely remember a statement from FIRST last spring stating that starting in 2013 all winning Regional Chairman's teams essays would be published. But I don't remember and need to research it.

We do not have a problem publishing the essay and it is posted on ChiefDelphi white papers.

Ed, I think I almost totally agree with your first point, with some small exceptions maybe.

As per your second point - if you find a statement regarding this, please do share.

As I said before, some of the questions I raise may sound controversial, so please keep the discussion as civil as it has been!