Where was the GP at Championships?

[KelliV]

So I thought a long long while about how to bring this up and I figured posting it would be the best way.

Mind you the incidents stated are just specific examples, this was something that happened the entire weekend, not an isolated case of GP slipping someone's mind.

I spent a lot of time taking the elevators up and down to get around the dome this Championship. It was early Friday when I got denied access, so I just smiled and waited for awhile (45 minutes) until someone showed up that would give me the clearance I needed to get me my badge, after all, the men and women working at the dome were just doing their job.

It was in these elevators that I heard things that broke my hearts. For example, Saturday I was going to retrieve a camera case and entered an elevator to see the operator in near tears, when I asked what was wrong she informed me that a member of one of the teams had called her a B***** with a few expletives that came prior to the offensive word, all because the woman was doing her job and didn’t let the woman on the elevator.

I tried to calm her down only to learn that she had heard that same phrase 6 times earlier that day, a day that she had only been working for 3 hours. The man who came in to relieve her for a bit said that he had been sworn at too, by both students and their parents.

I started to listen a bit and heard people yelling at the guards when they said they couldn’t bring in water, or their flags.

I’m sorry but if my grandmother heard me talk like that she would be turning over in her grave. GP is not something that just lives between conversations of FIRSTers, it should live everywhere. GP shouldn’t just come out for 7 weekends a year, it should come out 365 days a year.

Thank you for your time and I hope that next year I don’t have to walk into an elevator and hear what I heard, I was disgusted.

-Kelli