Paper Airplanes

[Doc Wu]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

They could do a lot to alleviate the problem if they'd just do the following:

1) Give Dean Kamen a reasonable time limit for his speech, and make him stick to it.
2) Consolidate the giving of awards into a single ceremony, as is done for every regional competition I've ever been to and which I've never heard anyone complain about before. The awards-between-every-match system was horrid.

Deans speeches have been quite a bit shorter than they have been in past. He knows he can be long winded and dry and has shortened them up, but he does have a message to get out and it can only be cut so short.

The awards used to be all in one setting. Everyone complained about that and about the dead time while setting up for the next match, so they broke the speeches and awards up into smaller pieces and use them in between matches.

You can't have it both ways.

I was disappointed by the conduct of students throwing paper planes and in their Mentors for not stopping it. I was concerned for people's safety. The stands are a place where safety glasses are not required (and should not need to be. its a place where you should be able to relax.)

I would have more to say about this, but couldn't possibly say it better than Libby did. It was embarrassing.

I fully expect this to result in another unenforceable rule, like noisemakers or saving seats, but enforceable or not, it has to be spelled out, apparently. We can't just rely on common sense.

I fully realize that we are dealing with 25,000 young adults. That means half adult and half child. Unfortunately, in situations like this, the child half often takes over. This is why we have Mentors or chaperones, in this case, to remind the students to stop and think before they act in situations like this. I'm disappointed more Mentors didn't step in here. I know, had my team been here, our teachers would have had the whole team on the bus and gone if they behaved like that.