FAHA mailbox: How to handle student curfew at competition?

[Ken Leung]

One of the biggest concern when a robotics team attend competition is the student's safety. Most parents would not let their kids go unless they know the team mentors are doing everything they can to protect their child. That's why most teams have curfew at competition, to make sure the students don't wander around until late at night.

The following fellow FIRST-a-holic is concerned about his/her team's curfew rules. Let's try to help him/her and share with us what your team does at competition about this.

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My team is having a problem right now. Of the two National Competitions we have gone to, we have issues with curfew. The students are not respecting it and even though we have checks, it is a joke to everyone because as soon as the adults check...they leave. I was wondering if there was perhaps a way to prevent this and what other teams have done in order to ensure the safety of their teams. What should be the penalty for students breaking curfew? What about those who allow them into their rooms after curfew?

Thank you.

[Elgin Clock]

Wow, I am shocked that this team does not know the 5 dollar solution to this problem.

In all competetions where we have the students staying at hotels, we use a piece of tape on the door. It is a special safety seal tape like on the boxes that movies and dvds and cd's have on them that tear and can not be put back together again perfectly.

It is taped on the door at the area where the door meets the frame. One side on the door, the other side on the frame.

Now, obviously this does not prevent the door from opening, it just lets us as the advisors know who went out of their rooms during the night and then the appropriate punishment is dealt with the following morning.

If anyone would like some info as to where we get this special kind of tape, PM me and let me know. I will try to find out.

[Swan217]

Put strips of tape on the outside edge of each hotel room after adult checks. If the tape is broken, then someone opened the door. Plus, since it's on the outside, that means the students can't "counterfeit" it later.

Our team has a policy that if important rules such as that are broken, then the student is immidiately sent home at their own expense.

[ngreen]

This is the first idea that you should take a roll(s) of duct(duck) tape and if someone breaks curfew they get taped to their bed/wall for an extended period of time.

That wasn't probably the best idea. So I'll try to offer others.

No playing with robot if you break curfew.

Set the rules early, give consequences (ie,. can't watch competition), make them sign it before you go on trip, and hold them to it.

Don't set ridiculous curfews like 9, or 10. 10:30 - 11:00 is a better curfew time or more if you are willing to stay up and then wake up the next morning.

Set a rigid schedule (ie. 8:00pm go to eat, 9:30 team meeting, 10:30 in rooms, 11:00 lights out).

If you break curfew you can't travel to the next competition. This with the driver's rule would catch most people.

Be creative. Hold a team meeting at 1:00 am when you discover that person and talk to the whole team without ever mentioning that person name while you glare at them. Say how you are dissapointed with this individual and such.

[Chris Fultz]

We have and enforce a curfew. Last year at one regional, part of the team chose to ignore it, and so the next night the entire team had a curfew that was 1 hour earlier. That seemed to fix the problem (nothing like a bit of peer pressure). I think if it would have happened a second time the students would have been sent home.

Sneaking out is also very disrespectful to your mentors and chaperones. They are assuming a great risk traveling with you, driving or flying, making sure you are safe. They have assumed a great legal responsibility for you - act like you know and appreciate it.

A simple method is to set a curfew, do a check, then do random 'bed checks'. If someone has slipped out - chances are good they will be caught.

What if something were to happen while they had slipped away. No one would know they were gone, and it could be morning before they were missed. Getting into trouble or getting hurt while you were supposed to be in your room would not be good for your team and their ability to continue to participate.

You should also remember that at many schools, the Robotics program may be on the 'fringes' of the school. Many administrators do not really understand what we do - a big negative incident could become a reason to drop the program. Think if you would like to be the student that killed your schools robotics program because you slipped out at midnight to go have some extra fun.

[Matt Leese]

Going back to my high school days (that's going back a few years), my team back then used to have the policy that for every five minutes late you were for curfew you had to come back one hour earlier the next day. Very few people were late for curfew again. And frankly, if people are leaving after curfew and checks, I'm sure that the school system has other disciplinary processes that they can go through.

Matt

[Bharat Nain]

We trust almost the whole of our team, therefore we dont have any hard curfews. However, our coaches do check up on us periodically, and make sure everything is fine. Before every competition we do enforce one strict rule which says students doing any wrong stuff get sent back home immediately on their own/their parents expense. It is unforunate for teams that cant trust their students and so it becomes important to enforce curfews and stuff. Using seals on doors is a good idea, but there are ways to get around that(I wont say because it requires the use of evil brains). All I can suggest is do whatever you can and check up periodically. I would also suggest talking to the whole team about such issues and telling them how important it is for them to behave well in order for the school to let them participate in such programs.

[Specialagentjim]

SigmaC@T's philosophy has always been sorta lax on the subject. Best way to enforce curfew: keep the students busy during the day, and don't overly enforce the curfew. By 11:00pm or midnight, our team is usually dead asleep. Saturday night, we had team members wake up in the wrong rooms, because they juss fell asleep in the wrong room without realizing it. Keep em busy, keep em moving.

Also, If you over-enforce curfew, you'll get the rebelious ones to want to break it just because it's there. Tell everyone there's a 6am wake up call, and you're not getting back to the hotel until 10pm. Most kids get the idea and start heading to sleep even before curfew sometimes.

[Redhead Jokes]

The culture on our team several years ago was very different than it is now. A senior said he loved it - no rules, didn't have to do any work. He was thrilled he was 18, could continue to follow no rules, and was sure we wouldn't deny him going to competitions.

We did.

Some ideas - put the troublemakers room next to the team leaders. If the hotel hasn't followed your instructions when you made your reservation, move some kids' rooms around after you arrive to have it the way you feel the need for.

Have a 10:30p team meeting, then they go to bed.

Other ideas have already been posted that I'm familiar with.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

No matter what kind of ingenious seal/device you come up with to see if kids are in their rooms or not, they will find a way around it. Kids have a tendancy to want to break rules. Take it from me, I would know. Expecially when they know there is some kind of obstacle to get around to achieve their goal.

Also, even if you have something that makes it impossible for kids to get out of the door unnoticed, they will find a way to get out. (See: Drop Panel Ceilings; Balconies & Ropes)

But getting back to the question at hand, I think the best way to deal with this problem is to not try and force the kids to obey the rule. Do not try to play the part of "all powerful mentor" who can "get you in trouble". I mean, I know I would give much more respect to a mentor who treats me as an equal than one who is barking orders down my throat. And respect is the thing that would make me, as a student, obey certain rules. Also, as ngreen said, dont set an outrageous curfew; you are just asking for it to be broken.

[Ryan Albright]

WEll my team they force cerfew on the younger students and the seniors/drivers they five us our own consent cause they know we will make the right descion and we are 18 and our parents are up there so if we go out we have to discuss it with our parents and stuff. At nationals we did have a mis comunication on when we would be backa nd they parents and mentors were a little mad but we did work it out. The best idea i know of is the tape on the doors. I have seen it enforced and it works really well

Originally Posted by Dan Swando

Put strips of tape on the outside edge of each hotel room after adult checks. If the tape is broken, then someone opened the door. Plus, since it's on the outside, that means the students can't "counterfeit" it later.

I don't believe in that especially since I've witnessed people going around a hotel tearing the tape off the doors Its a nice idea (the tape), but I think the people in the room have a fair arguement that some jerk went by and ripped it down while they were in there..


Anyway

Team 45's students have an 11pm curfew. The adults don't really care (for the most part) what you do as long as you are all in your room (by yourselves)after 11pm. If they break curfew or are caught sneaking out at night, they'll probably have a 9pm curfew the next night, and since nobody has ever pushed it twice, im not sure what they would do after that...I think they probably would be shipped home at their parents expense...

[EvanG]

People have already said my main points, so ill just summarize how it works with our team.

For mentors to strictly enforce a curfew- doesn't look like they're trying to protect the students interests from the students perspective. It looks like they're trying to stranglehold them. So that leads students to want to break the rules in the first place.

On our team there's a generally high degree of trust. We tell our mentor where we are interested in going, when we expect to be back, and we call him if we can't make it in time. We never travel alone and we watch out for each other. In the end, we make sure we're back at a reasonable time such as 11, because that way, we can reward ourselves by playing halo on the huge projector that our mentors let us keep in our room.

Putting the tape on the door just creates grounds to breed resentment. On our team, students would go between different team members rooms and just chat for a bit, or they'd come to our room to watch movies on the projector. Locking them in their room would definately cause a lot of boredom, and boredom means thrill seeking...

Of course, if your team has trouble makers, curfews can work. But if you have any respect/trust for the students on your team, they're high schoolers and can for the most part, look out for their own/each others interests.

[Scott L.]

My team never had a real curfew; we just had to check in at team meeting at the end of the day.
I was late one year in florida, but that was because the bus took too long getting back from the FIRST party. I was in no trouble because I was with the some of the teams's engineers who were also late getting back for the same reason.