Ethics of Telling a Team "No"

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

There seems to be an assumption here that a team is being stubborn or misrepresenting. There's two other possibilities here:

1. The team believes they fixed the problem. Last year, we had a number of unfortunate things happen to our robot in New York City. We did fix them and were fine later. (We went on to be the alliance captains that won NYC.) Our team is from NYC and been around long enough to have a reputation so people are apt to believe us if we say we fixed the problem. But what happens if a rookie team has the ball get stuck in their robot during the first two games and says it is fixed. Do you believe them or try to insist they don't load for autonomous? GP says it should be the former.
2. FRC isn't ONLY about winning. How is a team supposed to improve if they are told to sit in the corner? Granted a team shouldn't want to cause penalties for their partners. But if you can do something 10% faster than they can, maybe it is worth giving them a chance. That's something I like about this year's game. It encourages all three teams to be involved in some fashion.