What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

[marshall]

Originally Posted by qscgy

It has gotten to the point where, on my team, any winning robot is dismissed as "mentor-built". This is often untrue, and is especially unfair to the teams who win without needing a mentor-built robot. My point is, FIRST should be about learning, not just about getting a winning robot.

Isn't that more of an issue with your own team and being dismissive of other teams' cultures than an issue of how those other teams run?

Every team is different and the level of involvement/dedication can vary greatly from both the mentors and students on any given team. I ask my own students not to judge other teams robots as "mentor built" but rather to get to know the other teams and the work they put in to their robots... both as students and mentors.

This post isn't really directed at you but at what I see as a larger issue within FRC where teams are becoming more and more dismissive of other teams' cultures. It ends up being wrapped up as overly-simplified statements like "that team's robot was built by mentors!" or "that team takes this too seriously" or "that team isn't as good as they think they are" or "that team is just acting in safety theater" or "that team should stop reading the rules for loop holes" or "that team has a mentor coach instead of student coach" and the list goes on and on and on...

I feel like as a community we are better than this and need to rise above it and learn to be more respectful of the cultural differences that exist between teams. Every team is different and I feel like it shouldn't be up to my team to judge that another team's robot was built correctly by students or incorrectly by mentors.

But hey... that's just me and what I think would make FRC better.