Help with Team (I Need advice)

[Leav]

Hi,

I'm in quite a perdicament with my Team. I'll try to use this thread as a micro-blog where i ask for CD's community for advice..

First i will explain that in our school you are supposed to graduate the robotics class after the 12th grade, but due to a special situation that arised, the sophmores were able to write their "thesis" and graduate the robotics class in the 11th grade.

last year was our rookie year, and the team was equally "owned" by the sophmores (i was sophemore last year) and the seniors, since nobody had ever experienced FIRST before.

after graduatingfrom robotics, many sophmores (now seniors) chose not to continue with the robotics class (in the form of FIRST). but some , five of us, chose to conitnue because we got the bug

for some reason, our teacher decided that this year FIRST will be designated as a "sophmore project" and the seniors will act as mentors for the team.

However flatterd by the term mentor (I am, after all, not even 18 years old and the kids I am supposed to "mentor" are 16-17....) this was not what i joined on for.
I wanted to do work. the down and dirty programming, the hours struggling with the spare link that locks the drive chain, the aluminum welding at our supporting plant. the endless nights of debating arm designs and tetra grabbers. THAT was what I signed up for.

anyway, today I started working on a model ball shooter, and when our teacher came in (an hour late without an apology or something - not that she ows us something but it would be nice if she would explain why she was an hour late when i have already been there for 6 hours....) she freaked out and started saying some stuff about us (seniors) doing all the work and not letting the sophmores in on anything.

this is, on a large part true, but it is mostly because we feel that the sophmores are just lacking any passion for the project and are just not active.
they lack initiative and just generaly don't do anything unless we tell them to....

The situation bothers me (the sphmores not initiating anything) but i couldn't do anything....

it seems that along the way a rift was forming between the sophmores and the seniors. they compalin about our behaviour but i can say, in an almost completly objective way,that it is like a person complaining that he is dying of thirst, but being too lazy to pick up the glass of fresh water that is right there.

all they have to do is try and integrate, but they just complain!
I actively forced seniors to work with sophmores and observed from the side, for the most part they show no willingness to participate in the thought process and just do what the senior says (and he is not just telling them what to do! he tried asking for their opinion but al they did was "uhm... i'm not sure... what do you think?")

after my teacher freaking out we basicly had a talk with her and said that it is not ok that they do not accept us as part of the team and that is the way we want it to be, the teacher kindof acted like a politician and said nothing really, except what we already knew.

we are left out of the design proccess and the decision making, she buys parts for a design we did not talk about without talking to us (parts worth 100's of $$$) and just generally ignores our presence as students and only wants to talk to us as the "Teacher Aids", her extension as order keepers and people that can be left in charge of one of her projects..

What can I do?
we are now in situation we are going to say it's either were on the team or were not, no in between/"mini-mentor"/order-keeper/nanny job.....

and i don't want to lose FIRST.... (right now it's a lose-lose situation: wither be on the team the way she wants or not be on the team at all....)

Advice?
-Leav