FRC rules around seating need to change.

[JesseK]

A fundamental issue with this topic is brought up in the first story that gives us context:

The OP wanted to save a seat.

Ignore any perceived contradiction, perceived double standards or perceived hypocrisy. This situation brings up the point that people want to sit together, and should be allowed to sit together.

How many saved seats it too many? 1 seat? 12 seats? 48 seats for the 54-person team?

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by JesseK

A fundamental issue with this topic is brought up in the first story that gives us context:

The OP wanted to save a seat.

Ignore any perceived contradiction, perceived double standards or perceived hypocrisy. This situation brings up the point that people want to sit together, and should be allowed to sit together.

How many saved seats it too many? 1 seat? 12 seats? 48 seats for the 54-person team?

Additionally - if an empty seat is 'fair game' at any point in time, it becomes a real powder keg of a situation anytime someone gets up to use the restroom, eat, check the robot etc.

If you enforce the letter of the rule to its most literal interpretation, anytime someone gets up (for whatever reason), a pack of people can be waiting, claim a seat and quote the rule. I'm not saying people and teams don't take advantage of this, but at the same time I'm failing to see how many of the proposed solutions aside from straight up assigned seats will address the issue. I also can't quite wrap my head around how assigned seats would work with the variability in team size and how that too wouldn't lead to chunks of empty seats in premium locations that people would subsequently want to sit in...

-Brando

[nrgy_blast]

The biggest issue here isn't team vs team seat saving (first come first serve, we all know that you probably shouldn't jump into the middle of a large team section just because someone left to use the restroom). It's when a team blocks members of the general public from coming in to see what's going on. Whether an 'un-tagged' exec from a large company looking to "see what it's all about", parents or relatives showing up on Saturday to check out the action or an unsuspecting passer-by that just happened onto one of our tournaments, we need to show these people what FIRST is all about!

Welcome people into our crowd, don't show them how petty we can be about who is going to sit where to watch a match. If you leave your seat(s) unattended, don't expect them to be there when you get back, especially when people unbound by the general rules show up and need a spot to park on Saturday!

[GreyingJay]

Maybe there should be saving of a reasonable number of seats. There seem to be legitimate needs for minimum seating (scouting). Maybe each team gets to claim X number of seats using lanyards or labels or some such, but only in contiguous sections. Or something.

I've always interpreted the no-seat-saving rule as going both ways. No, you're not allowed to reserve seats for your team. Yes, that means I'm allowed to pop right in and sit in the middle of your "saved" block, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. But no, I won't do that unless I absolutely have to. I will be respectful of your desire to "save" a block of seats for your team scouts or parents, within reason, and when possible, if you are respectful of my need to take one of "your" seats if nothing else is available.

I would hope that every team would abide by this unwritten rule and agree with it, but clearly that's not happening.

My own story: I was lucky to be able to attend Worlds last year and I too, along with a few of my freshman students, was pushed away from a set of legitimately empty (as-yet-untaken) seats by an overenthusiastic mentor/parent from another team desiring to claim them for their team. Like, almost literally pushed, this mentor/parent shoved their way through. I made some comment to my team members like "Let's go find somewhere else guys, OUR team is graciously professional". My kids called me out on being passive aggressive but what can you do.

[Greg Needel]

Let me start out by saying I don't have the total answer to this, but it is something that FIRST needs to address. Over the years I have seen numerous terrible things happen as a result of trying to save seats including but not limited to : making kids cry, making adults argue, making adults cry, strategies involved in blocking access to exits and entrances, injuries from running, inadvertent tripping, etc. All just to try and get better seats.


Here are some sacrificial (beat them up all you want) ideas on things that could be done to help.

• Control which doors will be open at what times and make an easy system of a zig zag line like amusement parks for entry through a single entry.
• Tickets/assigned seats - teams put in the number of seats that each team needs and then a lottery happens to assign blocks of tickets. If teams want to swap tickets later so be it.
• Auction or raffle the best seats for charity - big team that wants good seats let them pay for them.
• Dedicated areas for x number of students per team (scouts) in the best section.
• Sections for active playing teams only (they do this at championship and it could be done at regional events also)
• Have sections dedicated to teams that want to win the spirit award and those who don't

I think generally this issue stems from the fact that teams take FRC events at different levels of seriousness. For some getting prime seats is about having the best spots for scouts which means better data and better event results. For others they just want good seats to see their robot play on the field. Both of these are fine, but they create situations where people act inappropriately, which in my opinion sets the tone of the event and defines the experience of many teams. (nobody wants to start their event by getting yelled at by the local power house team who feels like you are in the way).

I don't have a solution for this but how many years are we going to let people's experiences at event be influenced by something small and crappy like saving seats before it changes.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

I think generally this issue stems from the fact that teams take FRC events at different levels of seriousness. For some getting prime seats is about having the best spots for scouts which means better data and better event results. For others they just want good seats to see their robot play on the field. Both of these are fine, but they create situations where people act inappropriately, which in my opinion sets the tone of the event and defines the experience of many teams. (nobody wants to start their event by getting yelled at by the local power house team who feels like you are in the way).

There's also the case which I heard was the ugliest this year, and that was getting seats for opening and closing ceremonies. These were cases where the teams who were involved were not on the playing field or stage, yet there were people defending their seats like a herd of hyenas defending a watering hole.

[SM987]

We'll start another thread for this, but we're developing a series of PSA's which we hope will be used to humorously educate attendees at FIRST events about this issue, as well as others.

As others have mentioned in this thread, the vast majority of people are reasonable. Communication is key. There are some attendees that are hellbent and it simply isn't worth the effort, but these are the rare exception. I think ignorance of the rule is far more common than people maliciously "offending".

I know our team typically has 10-15 guests (family friends, parents, school board officials etc.) that may be at their first FIRST event. In a perfect world, we have time to explain the etiquette, but it doesn't always work that way.

[GreyingJay]

Another option, tangential to this issue: give guests special colored lanyards and instruct ALL teams to treat these people as VIPs. (Maybe they do this already, I don't know.)

Even when all teams are at their best behaviour they're going to walk into a stadium full of banners, loud cheering, colored T-shirts everywhere and they're just not going to know where is it "ok" to sit. To have team members welcome them into the fold, invite them to sit down and explain what's going on would be the ideal scenario, as some of you already do.

[gblake]

Who is going to carry the sentiments (quality and quantity) expressed here to the correct ears within FIRST?

Does anyone already connected to the correct lines of communication want to volunteer to do it?

Blake

[MrRoboSteve]

Originally Posted by gblake

Who is going to carry the sentiments (quality and quantity) expressed here to the correct ears within FIRST?

Does anyone already connected to the correct lines of communication want to volunteer to do it?

Blake

One route would be to fill out the survey, and put comments about the seating in there.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

Another option, tangential to this issue: give guests special colored lanyards and instruct ALL teams to treat these people as VIPs. (Maybe they do this already, I don't know.)

At Championship, this happens already. Badges of invited guests say "INVITED GUEST".

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

At Championship, this happens already. Badges of invited guests say "INVITED GUEST".

Most invited guests from what I observed were either VIPS or people affiliated with FIRST already.

Normal guests who just come by because they heard of a robotics competition have badges without anything under it from what I observed.

I also found some teams had tons of mentors with invited guest badges. Allowing them to stand field side during matches on the dome floor. Anyone know how that works?

[wazateer1]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

Another option, tangential to this issue: give guests special colored lanyards and instruct ALL teams to treat these people as VIPs. (Maybe they do this already, I don't know.)

My favorite thing about myths is they usually had some kind of visible outcome in the culture they originated in. One of my favorite typical myths is that of the "god in ugly human form". Travelers started telling myths of Gods who would pretend to be humans, ask for a night to stay, when they didn't receive it lay down some serious hurt, and when they did grant riches or long life or strong children or something. Most people think the lesson was that gods are fickle, but the truth is that this public mentality meant the hospitality of Ancient Greece was unparalleled. Turns out, treating every stranger like a "god" in disguise gives major credit to your culture. And who knows, maybe some of them will actually grant you "riches".

[Chris is me]

If your takeaway from the VIP stories is "we should make VIPs easier to identify so that no one is accidentally a jerk to them", I think you're missing the point of the story.

Edit: wazateer1 beat me to it.

[Chris Mounts]

Although I agree that the saving of seats is a huge problem, we had to arrive at MSC over 1.5 hours early to get alright seats, we need to look at the situation from the seat savers perspective as well. The adult mentors are responsible for the students at these events. This is a difficult job made almost impossible if we have students spread out over an entire stadium. We have a rather small team compared to many. I can't imagine the issues that huge teams have with keeping track of all the students.

With that said their are several 'regulars' who aggressively save seats. These teams are typically large,+30 students.They know who they are because they come prepared with things like team colored blankets to cover rows of seats. This is unacceptable and puts others in a bad situation. Walking into that section and asking them to remove their blanket is very likely to lead to a confrontation. I'm not sure how to deal with this.

If someone was being paid to run these events it would clearly be their job to take care of it but it is extremely unfair to ask a volunteer who is already giving so much to go get in an argument with people who should know better. I guess it falls to all of us to protect GP even if it is uncomfortable.