"Spare Parts" Rules Are Broken

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

... They intentionally make the rules vague so they can bend them at any time. They claim the rules should be followed with common sense rather than a judicial sense.
Gracious professionalism keeps us all looking the other way if a team breaks the rules. To the point where we'll allow a team to break a rule and then compete agaisnt them knowing they broke a rule. Why don't we tell anyone? Because you're supposed to be GP. If you were to tell, who would you tell? There should be a FIRST police officer, but there's not.
FIRST has been designed from the ground up without a set of checks and balances. There are no consequences for breaking the rules. FIRST just hopes people will be honest, a blind faith if you ask me.

Teams will continue bending and breaking the rules, gracious professional teams will continue looking the other way.

Can you imagine how thick the manual would be if FIRST outlined every single situation, so as to make the rules perfectly, black and white, no questions about it clear? My printer wouldn't be able to handle it!!!

I've never heard Gracious Professionalism defined as looking the other way when someone is breaking the rules. If you see something shady going on, tell someone about it! A judge, a referee, the pit announcer -- someone! There are consequences for breaking the rules. Ask any team that's ever gotten a penalty for something at a competition or disqualified from a match.

It's obvious that FIRST does hope people will be honest, and not try to break/bend the rules to gain an unfair advantage. That teams wouldn't bring a spare robot to the competition to swap out parts that they modified post-build. I would hope the same thing. Maybe it's just me, but I've always held FIRSTers to be people who knew the difference between right and wrong, between cheating and being inventive. Call me blind as well, but I thought the majority of us were above that.

FYI: I did a google search for "Gracious Professionalism" and got over 1,200 results. Scanning over the pages, almost ALL were from FIRST's and team's websites. Seems like most people get it. Or at least whoever writes the content for their webpage does.