Appropriate penalties for off-the-field ethical/behavioral violations

[Steve W]

I am starting this thread as a quote from Dave Lavery. The question relates to penalties for things such as building outside of build period, bringing prebuilt items to comp, not declaring costs properly, and any other off field or ethical foul.

What do you feel is appropriate and how should this be enforced? Who who do the enforcing and should there be any limits to the penalties.

[sanddrag]

I don't feel that any penalties are necessary because I couldn't imagine that any of the fine teams in this program would even consider such a thing. We don't need all these penalties because everyone knows these actions would be against "the spirit of the game." And if these things really do go on in our world then those teams should be ashamed of themselves and the rest of us should be proud that we are not them. And if you say that is is unfair to the honest people maybe so but remember, they are not cheating you, only themselves.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I don't feel that any penalties are necessary because I couldn't imagine that any of the fine teams in this program would even consider such a thing.

You'd be very surprised at how often such violations, and other similar ones occur.

Originally Posted by BurningQuestion

The team might not have known that they were in violation of the rules, and it would be unfair to punish then too severely for something that they might not have even known about. This should be applicable to most infractions.

Ignorance of the law does not make you exempt from it.

If I were FIRST, I'd announce to all teams that Team xxx has been caught breaking rules off the field to give their team an advantage. Everyone is going to find out anyways, you can just magically say "hey quess what guys, team xxx can't be picked for the finals, but we're not telling you why. Don't go around thinking that they did something wrong though, because that's not very nice"

Yes, this may not sound like much of a punishment, but Im guessing it's likely that no other teams are going to want to be associated with this team in any way, so they probably won't get picked for the finals (Now if they're in the top 8, you've got a problem. They shouldn't be in the finals, so here's where a ban on that comes in).

You've now got to deal with the other 30+ teams at the event all knowing you cheated. That's gotta suck, and I imagine the embarrassment and shame you would feel by knowing that everyone is looking down on you would be pretty effective at deterring you (and anyone else) from doing it again.

I agree that teams should not receieve any awards related to the offending action. But if Team xxx takes their drivetrain home and works on it, they shouldnt be banned from receiving an animation award. However, Engineering Inspiration, and Chairman's, which aren't directly related to the offending action, should not be attainable for such a team, as what they did goes against everything these awards stand for.

In addition, FIRST should write some sort of admonishing letter to the teachers, mentors, and sponsors of the team telling them what they did wrong, why it was wrong, and what will happen if they do it again. I think this is particularly effective because what company is going to want to be affiliated with a known cheater? Odds are they'll be dropped on the spot, or told to clean up their act immediately so it never happens again. Either way, the same effect is achieved.

The problem with all this is that the majority of any given team probably had nothing to do with the offending action, or possibly did not even know of it's occurrence. Most teams have a small group of members that act as the pit crew. These are probably the ones that would say, remove a part and work on it. Yes, the entire team is accountable, but a way needs to be found that adequately gets the message across that cheating will not be tolerated in FIRST, punishes the offending team, but does not ruin the FIRST experience for all those that had absolutely nothing to do with the occurance.

Is it possible to find such a median? probably not. Not to mention the fact that probably 99% of all cheating goes unnoticed, and there is a good percent (manufacturing before the 6 weeks begin) that just can't be detected.

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by Cory

If I were FIRST, I'd announce to all teams that Team xxx has been caught breaking rules off the field to give their team an advantage.

That by itself is enough to make the team hate FIRST and go around making bad comments about everything. Announcing things just makes it worse. As I pointed out in my earlier post, who knows if the whole team was for it. What if half the team was totally against it, those kids would probably feel like killing themselves the moment they hear something like that announced. I know this because its happen to me many times in other sports. Putting down teams verbally is not the way to go, it just causes more problems, especially at a competition. Yes, eventually it'll become "the talk" in the whole of FIRST if a team was caught violating a rule, and its not good. And then as Mike Ciance and Phil 33 pointed out, we need to know the degree of the violation more than anything else. And also made clear what is a violating and whats not.

If we're talking about leveling the playing field, maybe taking a part to the hotel and working on it is fine(maybe FIRST decides to say its ok). You're still leveling the playing field if every team is allowed to take one or two parts to the hotel and working on them because all teams get about the same time to work in hotels. It has its own problems though.

[phrontist]

Violation of rules should be punished swiftly with immediate expulsion from whatever competition it occurred at for it's duration. Every round that a cheating team competes in is illegitimate, and deprives all involved parties of an accurate comparison of robots. No one would get caught if they knew the consequences, and if no one gets caught, everyone except the cheater goes home happy. Which is, of course, the desired outcome.

That being said, the rules should be extremely clear, with no room for interpretation. The must also be justifiable as rules that maintain either "Saftey" or "A Level Playing Field." If rules don't immedeatly make sense to competitors, they are more likely to break them.

[Mike Ciance]

Originally Posted by phrontist

Violation of rules should be punished swiftly with immediate expulsion from whatever competition it occurred at for it's duration. Every round that a cheating team competes in is illegitimate, and deprives all involved parties of an accurate comparison of robots. No one would get caught if they knew the consequences, and if no one gets caught, everyone except the cheater goes home happy. Which is, of course, the desired outcome.

That being said, the rules should be extremely clear, with no room for interpretation. The must also be justifiable as rules that maintain either "Saftey" or "A Level Playing Field." If rules don't immedeatly make sense to competitors, they are more likely to break them.

it's a proven principle that strict rule encourages rebellion. if FIRST is reasonable people will obey the rules out of morals, not fear

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by Mike Ciance

it's a proven principle that strict rule encourages rebellion. if FIRST is reasonable people will obey the rules out of morals, not fear

Unfortunately I don't subscribe to that idea. Can you back up your statement with facts?

I will use speeding as an example. There is a posted speed limit. If there is not strict enforcement of the limit and there are no penalties for breaking the law then you will find that over time a majority of drivers will exceed the limit. You can see it on the highways all the time. Even with enforcement people try to find ways around it. Radios, cell phones and radar detectors are all used to help one break the law. I believe that rebellion comes when unfair and unwarranted rules are imposed without consideration of the individual or mass. They are usually self serving rules as well.

[Mike Ciance]

Originally Posted by Steve W

Unfortunately I don't subscribe to that idea. Can you back up your statement with facts?

I will use speeding as an example. There is a posted speed limit. If there is not strict enforcement of the limit and there are no penalties for breaking the law then you will find that over time a majority of drivers will exceed the limit. You can see it on the highways all the time. Even with enforcement people try to find ways around it. Radios, cell phones and radar detectors are all used to help one break the law. I believe that rebellion comes when unfair and unwarranted rules are imposed without consideration of the individual or mass. They are usually self serving rules as well.

you also must consider the group of people that are on the road vs the group of people involved in FIRST, and the difference in situation and objective.

on the road, people speeding is life-threatening, and any accident, even minor, has a bad impact on the experience of everybody else on the road because it slows traffic, crippling the objective of driving, which is to get places faster. in FIRST, a team getting a slight advantage is not life-threatening. it may have an impact on how the placement of teams in the outcome, but that is not the true objective of FIRST. FIRST is about learning. i have yet to see a situation where one team cheating has significantly hindered the learning of another. as long as some form of disaproval is shown from FIRST, and some action is taken to counter the advantage, such as point deduction or a late start during subsequent rounds, the main objective of FIRST is still being very much achieved. in fact, everybody will learn a little from one team's mistake. in the end, everybody can still compete, the team who commited the foul goes home with some shame little animosity towards FIRST, and most importantly everybody has had the valuable learning experience. we need to get rid of all the hostility and concentrate on what why joined FIRST to begin with.

[Aignam]

Originally Posted by Mike Ciance

you also must consider the group of people that are on the road vs the group of people involved in FIRST, and the difference in situation and objective.

on the road, people speeding is life-threatening, and any accident, even minor, has a bad impact on the experience of everybody else on the road because it slows traffic, crippling the objective of driving, which is to get places faster. in FIRST, a team getting a slight advantage is not life-threatening. it may have an impact on how the placement of teams in the outcome, but that is not the true objective of FIRST. FIRST is about learning. i have yet to see a situation where one team cheating has significantly hindered the learning of another. as long as some form of disaproval is shown from FIRST, and some action is taken to counter the advantage, such as point deduction or a late start during subsequent rounds, the main objective of FIRST is still being very much achieved. in fact, everybody will learn a little from one team's mistake. in the end, everybody can still compete, the team who commited the foul goes home with some shame little animosity towards FIRST, and most importantly everybody has had the valuable learning experience. we need to get rid of all the hostility and concentrate on what why joined FIRST to begin with.

Lest we forget that some joined FIRST to experience something unlike anything else---a competition without that brutal contact sport-esque competetiveness. Cheating undermines the entire concept of FIRST. How can you defend cheaters---the antithesis of this organization? There's nothing inspirational about cheating, there's nothing gracious about cheating...Sure, extremely harsh penalties may seem out of place in FIRST...but we're all about preparation for the real world, aren't we? And in the real world, real cheating has bigger, harsher consequences. I think getting disqualified would be a better lesson than learning that you can get away with anything if you play your cards right. We're fostering science and technology, not white-collar crimes.

[Arefin Bari]

Originally Posted by Aignam

Lest we forget that some joined FIRST to experience something unlike anything else---a competition without that brutal contact sport-esque competetiveness. Cheating undermines the entire concept of FIRST. How can you defend cheaters---the antithesis of this organization? There's nothing inspirational about cheating, there's nothing gracious about cheating...Sure, extremely harsh penalties may seem out of place in FIRST...but we're all about preparation for the real world, aren't we? And in the real world, real cheating has bigger, harsher consequences. I think getting disqualified would be a better lesson than learning that you can get away with anything if you play your cards right. We're fostering science and technology, not white-collar crimes.

We all have been saying what the penalties might be for the cheaters and also what is our opinion in general. now lets state the problem...

"What do you feel is appropriate and how should this be enforced? Who who do the enforcing and should there be any limits to the penalties." - Steve W.

few respective members said that we should penalize teams, and few other respective members said that we should just let it go, because we dont want to lose teams. most of us said that FIRST should be enforcing these and few said that there should be limits (they posted the limits that we should have). (PLEASE correct me if i am wrong).

Here is a question for all of you (it was mentioned before, but i didnt see any response)..

"How would you know if a team is cheating? and if you do know, how would you prove it?"

as I mentioned earlier in my other post, that is when "Honesty" comes into play.

-Arefin

[Aignam]

Originally Posted by Arefin Bari

We all have been saying what the penalties might be for the cheaters and also what is our opinion in general. now lets state the problem...

"What do you feel is appropriate and how should this be enforced? Who who do the enforcing and should there be any limits to the penalties." - Steve W.

few respective members said that we should penalize teams, and few other respective members said that we should just let it go, because we dont want to lose teams. most of us said that FIRST should be enforcing these and few said that there should be limits (they posted the limits that we should have). (PLEASE correct me if i am wrong).

Here is a question for all of you (it was mentioned before, but i didnt see any response)..

"How would you know if a team is cheating? and if you do know, how would you prove it?"

as I mentioned earlier in my other post, that is when "Honesty" comes into play.

-Arefin

More rigorous inspections---

You'd be surprised at how dramatically the results of each year's games might've changed had there been a device to test a robot's current, and I don't think it would be incredibly difficult to enforce bringing illegal parts into the pit area, as has been previously mentioned. If someone were to monitor what goes in and out of the pit, surely the game would be made significantly fairer. Of course, if this were to be enforced, we should institute some more lenient rules relating to such, as it would be a shame to have a team which was incapable of competing due to such a strict rule.

[Mike Ciance]

Originally Posted by Aignam

Lest we forget that some joined FIRST to experience something unlike anything else---a competition without that brutal contact sport-esque competetiveness. Cheating undermines the entire concept of FIRST. How can you defend cheaters---the antithesis of this organization? There's nothing inspirational about cheating, there's nothing gracious about cheating...Sure, extremely harsh penalties may seem out of place in FIRST...but we're all about preparation for the real world, aren't we? And in the real world, real cheating has bigger, harsher consequences. I think getting disqualified would be a better lesson than learning that you can get away with anything if you play your cards right. We're fostering science and technology, not white-collar crimes.

well as i said in an earlier post, teams who often break rules should recieve stricter penalties. mild punishments dont encourage cheating, but hars punishments discourage participation and learning. if a team learns it's lesson from a mild punishment, i see no reason why any more action should be taken. i am sure that for most teams the sheer loss of pride that a discovered rulebreaking would cause would be enough in itself to encourage reform. like a few have said, there are some situations in which a minor rule-breaking can make the difference between a team having a normal season and a team not having a season at all. surely no more than a chastizement should be given for situations such as these. like i said, we need to consider how much of a problem the cheating actually causes.

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by Mike Ciance

you also must consider the group of people that are on the road vs the group of people involved in FIRST, and the difference in situation and objective.

on the road, people speeding is life-threatening, and any accident, even minor, has a bad impact on the experience of everybody else on the road because it slows traffic, crippling the objective of driving, which is to get places faster. in FIRST, a team getting a slight advantage is not life-threatening. it may have an impact on how the placement of teams in the outcome, but that is not the true objective of FIRST. FIRST is about learning. i have yet to see a situation where one team cheating has significantly hindered the learning of another. as long as some form of disaproval is shown from FIRST, and some action is taken to counter the advantage, such as point deduction or a late start during subsequent rounds, the main objective of FIRST is still being very much achieved. in fact, everybody will learn a little from one team's mistake. in the end, everybody can still compete, the team who commited the foul goes home with some shame little animosity towards FIRST, and most importantly everybody has had the valuable learning experience. we need to get rid of all the hostility and concentrate on what why joined FIRST to begin with.

I don't disagree with your statement but you have yet to show me where you get your "facts".

[MissInformation]

A lot of these posts are focusing on rules that level the playing field, such as the amount of money spent on a robot, but don't forget the rules that address safety concerns, such as modifying certain parts. If FIRST says do not modify the thing-a-ma-bob and a team says but if I cut this away and play with this, the thing-a-ma-bob will be so much more powerful and faster so let's ignore that rule and they they do so, then they have just endangered not only themselves but others. The people who inspect the robots for safety do a great job but as humans they are fallible.

A team cheating may or may not hinder another team's learning, but I think FIRST would be less inspiring if cheating was treated as lightly as just deducting a few points. Heck, if the advantage was great enough, losing a few points or starting late wouldn't matter at all to the team that cheated. And a team cheating can have more consequences than placement. A team cheating could win awards it doesn't deserve along with scholarships that a team that didn't cheat could have won.

This past fall we had a little mini-bot competition (pieces of plywood with wheels, powered by drills). One of the objects in this game was to remove a soda can from a cinder block. Now, seeing as how the cinder block could damage things if it was knocked over, a rule was made stating that teams would lose points if they knocked the block over. One of the teams, mistakenly thinking I'm such a cool adult that I would find it funny, told me that they were planning on knocking the cinder block over anyhow, just to show how strong they could make their mini-bot. Personally, I think it would have been funny to see, but I really wanted the kids to get the idea that during the game, they couldn't bend or break the rules that way, so I conferred with some of the adults and we made a new rule up that stated that any team that intentionally knocked over the cinder block would have to clean up the meeting room by themselves for the rest of the pre-season meetings. Needless to say, the cinder block remained upright. If the penalty had been too harsh, such as scrubbing the entire shop down with toothbrushes, I have no doubt that block would have tumbled. So there's a good example of finding a penalty that was not too lenient and not too severe. If only FIRST's problems were this easy to solve...

I think everyone is doing a great job in this thread in pointing out the different sides. I think I've changed my mind quite a few times today because of the points made. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I've been amazed by the people who can't believe anyone in FIRST would cheat. I may not be an expert in human nature, but I have enough experience with different groups (girl scouts, little league, ice-skating, Relay for Life, etc.) to know that competition can bring out the worse in some people.

Heidi

[Aignam]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

That by itself is enough to make the team hate FIRST and go around making bad comments about everything. Announcing things just makes it worse. As I pointed out in my earlier post, who knows if the whole team was for it. What if half the team was totally against it, those kids would probably feel like killing themselves the moment they hear something like that announced. I know this because its happen to me many times in other sports. Putting down teams verbally is not the way to go, it just causes more problems, especially at a competition. Yes, eventually it'll become "the talk" in the whole of FIRST if a team was caught violating a rule, and its not good. And then as Mike Ciance and Phil 33 pointed out, we need to know the degree of the violation more than anything else. And also made clear what is a violating and whats not.

If we're talking about leveling the playing field, maybe taking a part to the hotel and working on it is fine(maybe FIRST decides to say its ok). You're still leveling the playing field if every team is allowed to take one or two parts to the hotel and working on them because all teams get about the same time to work in hotels. It has its own problems though.

FIRST would never make it policy to allow teams to work on their robots at their hotels---hotels would hate that, and when you're a nonprofit organization, bad publicity is the last thing you need.

And this may sound harsh, but if there's a team with teachers and mentors who tolerate extreme rule-breaking, and students who do nothing to provoke some sort of change, I'm not sure I want any of them in my organization, much less as the scientist or engineer who will be developing the technologies of the future. There isn't anything inspirational about cheating, and it obviously doesn't display gracious professionalism, so why should cheaters waste both our time and their time by participating in FIRST. This goes a bit beyond hurting people's feelings and bad reputations...

Originally Posted by phrontist

That being said, the rules should be extremely clear, with no room for interpretation.

When the rules are extremely clear, people try their hardest to find loopholes. Last year, we were told that common sense and gracious profressionalism would prevail. FIRST shouldn't have to make ironclad rules and regulations in order to function safely and without cheating.