Award Eligibility and Judging

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

My evidence is the judges that I have talked to and they have said just that. One judge, in fact, said that she had to convince the other judges that a team SHOULD be eligible for Engineering Inspiration despite the fact that they had won an award on Friday, which went against the whole panel of judges' mindset. This has happened at a couple different events. We have also had a judge tell us directly that we didn't win Engineering Inspiration because we won a tech award on Friday. On the other hand, we have won both at different events and different judges seem to think differently.

I'm not being bitter about it. I'm just asking whether or not people agree with this mindset. I don't mind if we don't win certain awards, so please don't take it in that direction.

I'm.. doubtful. But if that IS happening, it's something that should be addressed with the Regional Director and Judge Advisor, because it almost certainly isn't how things are supposed to work. Or, at least, I don't think it is, and I'm fairly confident most teams would agree that a Friday Tech award shouldn't take you out of the running of a Saturday qualifying award. And the regional should certainly take into account the opinions of the teams that are attending it.

Ultimately the judges will hand out awards however they deem to, but the RD and JA have a fair bit of influence in the process, if not the final decisions. I would hope the RD would listen if enough teams point out the silliness of disqualifying an excellent team from EI simply because they won a tech award on Friday.