Team Corruption - Advice Urgently Needed

[techhelpbb]

Look I hate to say this but:

Let me assure you what you are experiencing is disturbingly similar to things you will encounter in the real world and it has nothing to do with STEM careers per se:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/24/living...-workplace-cb/

If you want to see your company fail: start by letting cliques form.
It's the fastest way for things to become about politics and games rather than the weighing the merits.
Shortly there after the customers will realize that merit is not the goal.
Shortly after that if the company doesn't disband it will disintegrate.

The thing about FIRST is that as a student you can only do it for so long.
Disintegration of the team as you know it is inevitable because of graduation.

My advice is that you have to decide what you get out of FIRST as you experience it.
Are you learning skills? If you are, could you learn them another way?
Is the issue that you feel like you won't win? Is that really the most important thing to you?
Is the issue that you feel unappreciated? If so can you do what you care about another way?

I've gone down the road many times and it's never a good road to travel.
'Outing' them is not going to address anything.
Confronting them is unlikely to address anything.
If this is really entrenched as you say - time to put aside the frustration and get back to the basics: what can you get out of STEM and how can you grow that.

Own your future, or let me assure you, others will try to own it.
Sometimes this means you have to tolerate nonsense for a while.
This is the reason why I basically don't care if my team wins the actual competition:
My goal is to produce opportunity via STEM - not to make people think that wining a competition is anything like real life.
I don't get trophies and loud music in real life - maybe a nice dinner or a bonus.
Even if we fail - miserably - I hope the students enjoyed working with the tools and learned about the process.
Even our worst years have produced students that go on to do great because you can learn from failure.

So stop and remember this is not life and death. The sun will rise tomorrow.