FRC Team Bullying

[AnonymousTurtle]

Hey everyone,

I've been putting this off for a while because I've been pushing it to the back of my mind, but I feel like I've waited long enough. I'm on an anonymous account to protect the team I was on from backlash.

I've been a member on my FRC team for 2 years, and have held leadership roles both years. I'm also a female, which does play a role in this story. In my first position I was a manufacturing lead. My second year the lead mentor asked me to take a position in outreach, so I figured why not get experience in different fields. Suddenly, everyone seemed to have forgotten that I had any manufacturing experience or knew anything about robotics. Any ideas I had were immediately pushed aside and any time I suggested a fix I was told I knew nothing in the subject, but then one of the guys would suggest the same fix and he would be praised for finding a solution. I finally just stopped trying to help robot production all together.

On top of not doing what I was really passionate about, all the blame started getting put on me whenever something went wrong. Other non-production based leaders were supposed to help me out. When a grant I had asked for help with countless times didn't get submitted when multiple people told me to wait to submit it so they could read it over, I got blamed. The lead mentor asked me what the eff-word (he used the actual word) was wrong with me. I didn't feel any trust toward him after that moment. There were other situations where I would do 90% of the work for something, but the males I had edit my work would get all the credit. I would also ask people for help on chairmans, which I wrote the entirety of, but they said they had to work on something else (that wasn't even related to build season). I kept pushing through because I had to, and regionals were coming up.

I was on drive team, Chairmans presentation, and was nominated for Deans List at regionals. I only really wanted to do one of those things, and I didn't choose to do the other two, but, needless to say, I was extremely busy. People started yelling at me for not being dedicated enough when I was out practicing for something else. I constantly got yelled at in the pit and when I brought up someone was breaking the rules they'd brush me off saying the rules don't matter. When a male told them the same thing I did, they'd immediately do what he asked. My breaking point was when someone yelled at me for cleaning.

My friends found me crying outside, and once I told them what happened they got the lead mentor. I did NOT want them to do that, as this was the same lead mentor who yelled at me. He told me to suck it up.

I started talking to other girls on the team, and was sad to learn I was not the only one facing these issues. One girl that really enjoyed building was pushed into outreach, all the girls were blamed when something went wrong, and they never got credit for the work they completed. We had 0 girls in engineering roles, yet the team brags about the number of females it has. At that point I was so frustrated by the lack of equality on our team, I confronted the lead mentor. Instead of him agreeing with the fact that our team had a problem, he started attacking me. He told me I had no friends, that I deserve to be treated the way I was, and that I wasn't sacrificing. He brought up times where I physically could not come to robotics as reason why I don't sacrifice. When I told him about the times I pulled all-nighters to get awards done, he said that was only one example of my sacrifice.

I finally quit the team, because clearly the mentor is too stuck in his ways to try to change. Afterwards, all my friends on the team ignored me, and I'm scared to tell people the lead mentor was the real reason I left. They think I left because I hate them, but I don't. I also want to start a new team, but I'm scared they'll think I'm doing it to annoy them. I just want to make a safe place for people to be able to learn about STEM without the fear of being pushed into gender roles or yelled at.