Inclusion in FIRST

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Kimmeh

Lodging. Many teams segregate students by gender. How do you handle out LGBTQ students?

This is something that hasn't come up as an issue with our team. When we travel, students pick their roommates pretty freely.

Another person brought up how to deal with negative statements said by members of the team and specifically brought up joking about rape. We’ll also extend this to include everything from slurs and stereotypes to jokes and off-hand comments. Does your team do anything about comments like these? (I can see this being less of an issue that some of the other things we've addressed. It’s still worth bringing up.)

Simply put, we don't have comments like these. This sort of stuff is completely covered in the student expectation section of our handbook, and should it come up as an issue with a student we would discuss it with that student individually. Failing to meet student expectations disqualifies a student from lettering, and possibly from travelling with the team as well. Image is important in FIRST - teams can't afford to come off looking bad, and the behavior you allow in your team meetings will flow over into public interactions with other teams. That'll result in teams blacklisting you when it comes to alliance selection (I know my team has blacklisted a few teams in the past based on their behavior at the event)!