Gracious Professionalism

[Jim McGeehin]

Originally posted by SuperDanman

Going back to my origional point, the purpose of FIRST is to advance the field of engineering, to recognize science and technology - Gracious Professionalism is designed to facilitate that. If you didn't design your robot with the idea that it can be pushed - if you designed your robot hoping that a key element of this year's game wouldn't be applied to it - should you be able to achieve victory over someone who DID incorporate that part of the game into their robot? Each year, teams learn lessons about different aspects of engineering - that is the purpose of FIRST. If you didn't design your robot to be able to withstand being pushed, well you learned something for next year. Of course, if your robot is actually damaged, Gracious Profesionalism states that the team that damaged you work with you to repair it.

Oh, I'm not talking from a personal standpoint. We've been pushed around and we weren't damaged. Dean said you should prepare to have your robot pushed at Kickoff. I'm merely stating my views.

And as to your comments, they have almost nothing to do what I've said. The purpose of FIRST is to educate, but not by loss. It's designed to make people think creatively within the constraints.

And as to your second rebuttal, it does change them by a great deal. I'll try to avoid analogies this time, even though they make things clearer.

The goal, designed to be moved in all directions, is not anyone's concern. Under normal circumstances, the goals aren't broken. Extreme cases can occur, and penalties will be suffered for damages.

This is not the same with robots. By forcing a robot to do something it's not supposed to, it becomes very likely that something will break. Fixing a robot does not erase the fact that you broke the robot to achieve victory. Accidents happen, but your strategy is with intent. Think about it.