How involved are your mentors?

[Edoc'sil]

I cannot begin to explain how much mentors building the bot disgusts me. This competition is about the students, not about the robots. The amount of knowledge that is imparted by students building and designing the robot is immense, and every time that a mentor helps with the bot is an opportunity to learn lost. I have talked to teams a regionals where they didn't even know how their robot worked, much less how to go about designing it. We have built our robot with hands off mentors for three years now, and I have learned the value of seeing the mentors as a extremely valuable resource, not just another team member.

I see the value of the 50/50 argument, but I believe that in reality it leans more towards 60/40, 70/30 in reality with the students doing less and less work with the mentors solving the problems when the kids get stuck on a problem.

If the students can't build a robot like this I have little respect for your team. I admire the hard work and long hours many teams put into their robots, and when I compare student built robots to mentor built ones I find mentor bots to be extremely lacking, despite their fluid design and effectiveness.

Well I've be rude, watch the flame wars begin.