Appropriate penalties for off-the-field ethical/behavioral violations

[Aignam]

Originally Posted by Mike Ciance

you also must consider the group of people that are on the road vs the group of people involved in FIRST, and the difference in situation and objective.

on the road, people speeding is life-threatening, and any accident, even minor, has a bad impact on the experience of everybody else on the road because it slows traffic, crippling the objective of driving, which is to get places faster. in FIRST, a team getting a slight advantage is not life-threatening. it may have an impact on how the placement of teams in the outcome, but that is not the true objective of FIRST. FIRST is about learning. i have yet to see a situation where one team cheating has significantly hindered the learning of another. as long as some form of disaproval is shown from FIRST, and some action is taken to counter the advantage, such as point deduction or a late start during subsequent rounds, the main objective of FIRST is still being very much achieved. in fact, everybody will learn a little from one team's mistake. in the end, everybody can still compete, the team who commited the foul goes home with some shame little animosity towards FIRST, and most importantly everybody has had the valuable learning experience. we need to get rid of all the hostility and concentrate on what why joined FIRST to begin with.

Lest we forget that some joined FIRST to experience something unlike anything else---a competition without that brutal contact sport-esque competetiveness. Cheating undermines the entire concept of FIRST. How can you defend cheaters---the antithesis of this organization? There's nothing inspirational about cheating, there's nothing gracious about cheating...Sure, extremely harsh penalties may seem out of place in FIRST...but we're all about preparation for the real world, aren't we? And in the real world, real cheating has bigger, harsher consequences. I think getting disqualified would be a better lesson than learning that you can get away with anything if you play your cards right. We're fostering science and technology, not white-collar crimes.