this thread again
That’s a debate that has no end.
My 2 cents (as a white male): The real reason to NOT have guys on a team would be to allow the gals to develop their own styles, and get away from the stereotypical tendencies. Basically, to force the issue a bit. They’ll have to compete against–and with–the male-dominated teams at competition, best if they know what they can do. (842 pulled a trick a few years back where one competition of the team was gals-only. Seems like that forced the gals to work with the guys and get the robot going, and by the end of it the team was stronger.)
For the other types of diversity-limited teams: Same thing (at least to a point). Yes, it is valuable to work well with someone who’s different than you. OTOH, if the stereotype is that you can’t do X because you’re [diversity], then getting a team of [diversity] doing X is a powerful counter-argument, that then sets you up to be able to demonstrate that said stereotype doesn’t apply to you. Once you get that going… well, it takes time (lots of it in some cases), but eventually the stereotype will wear off a bit.
for us, with our four team members we dont have to decide we got who we got and that is it. But in the past when we have had larger teams, we would always pick whoever was best at driving through driver practice, gender and race did not matter. by doing this we have had a good mix though, last year we had an African American Driver, the year before we had two female drivers. and the year before than we had 2 male drivers.
Our team is also predominantly consistent of minorities. Our drive team consists of 1 Asian and 3 Hispanics (1 being female).
Our school is a Title I school in the Phoenix Union High School District of 27,000 students. Our school has 305 students: 72% are Hispanic, 19% Caucasian, 6% Asian, 3% African American. Females make up 40% of our team.
**Minorities on our Drive Team:
**We allow for all members of the team to voluntarily participate in our driver’s test and allow all members of our team and equal chance in studying up for the test as well as taking the test and proving their skills and qualifications for being on the drive team.
**How our team promotes FIRST to minorities:
**Including minorities to our team is not only including the students, but the parents and larger communities because they make FIRST possible.
- Attend both STEM and non-STEM events
- Host and run an FLL and FTC tournament as well as help at others
- Mentor FLL teams in minority majority schools
- Hold an FLL scrimmage
One of the many obstacles our members personally encounter is a language barrier, specifically with the Spanish-speaking community.
In order to address this, we:
- Translate FIRST content and our weekly vlogs
- Bring Spanish translators to every event
- Created a Diversity Plan to ensure a variety of perspectives are considered
- Ensure our translations are accurate (and not just Google Translate)
**Some of our Spanish Subtitles Translations:
**What’s FIRST:
2017 Game Reveal: (“Subtitles/CC” must be turned on in “Settings” in YouTube video)
2016 Game Reveal:
We have also translated the video “This Isn’t a Robot (Produced by RadicalMedia).” However, there are currently issues preventing this from being implemented on FIRST’s end.
If any teams are interested in obtaining more Spanish translations of FIRST content or translating FIRST content yourselves, please feel free to contact team 2375!
Our drives team consist of two white males (coach and operator) two white females (human player and pilot) and I’m not quite sure what nationality our driver Ersana is. he’s brown skinned but I don’t think he’s African-American.
Our team is an inner city team and we have had great diversity in the past but we don’t always look like one (I remember MOE actually thought we were suburban). This year we were very small (about 20 kids) most of the African-American kids dropped out pretty early in the season.FIRST is a tough sell to African-American kids who just see it as school more than fun so they often pass on it or drop out when they see the amount of work and commitment is required.
Our team does not do a great job of marketing towards minorities to join the team. The county we represent is 94.4% white, so the community is pretty white-washed already, but in general, we only ever market to students that might already be interested in STEM. To the best of my memory, we have never had an African American student on the team. I remember that the FLL teams we started in the county were actually much more diverse than our FRC team, but we’ve not had any of our students who competed in FLL cross over to FRC yet.
FTFY
I think teaser threads serve no purpose. To me it’s the Cd version of clickbait. Show what you got or don’t bother but I certainly am nit going tio tramp on theor moment. What he’s asking is actually relevant. We’re trying to change the culture and that should be everyone’s culture. Because the question makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t make it irrelevant.
I think you misread that post. Nowhere did he question the legitimacy of OP’s question or imply that it’s an ‘irrelevant question’. He was examining the legitimacy of OP’s tactics in finding accurate data by using a CD poll.
All he was seeking was information. Why is that a problem?
No. I knew what I was saying. But thanks anyways.
Our team only recognizes members as either Student, Mentor, or Coach. There is NO value in any other classification. All students are encourage and given a chance to try out for the drive team. We do not simply pick a team and keep them until they graduate. Each season a drive team COULD change based on the talents of the members. I see NO value in this pole.
I see your point, and it does make sense if the goal of your FRC team is to be a counterargument. However, our goal isn’t to use kids to win arguments. Our goal is to inspire students to appreciate STEM. What has your team done to inspire the boys whom you refuse to invite?
Since you want to question my intent, I’m going to thoroughly and respectfully dissect your response so that you can better understand why I posted this.
If you read my original post, you can see that I hope to learn a bit about the racial makeup of drive teams teams. It shouldn’t be that hard to understand. I’m not doing this for a project, I’m doing this out of my own curiosity which means that if the data isn’t spot on, it won’t be a super huge issue. I tend to disagree when you say that open polls don’t generate a reliable response. It produces enough information that I now know more than I did before.
You can’t honestly or realistically expect me to go around physically polling teams which is why I created this thread.
I am very interested in chief delphi at a large, which is why i have 140+ posts and posted threads, many of which have received positive feedback from some of the most prestigious people in FIRST. Am I interested in FRC at a large? Is that really a question? If I wasn’t interested in improving FIRST at a large i wouldn’t be volunteering at 6+ FLL events, I wouldn’t be the founder of the Legion of black FIRST participants (LBFP) (http://clay1999soccer.wixsite.com/lbfp). I wouldn’t be spending 250+ hours working to make my FRC team the best it can be. If I wasn’t dedicated I wouldn’t be the guy that moved my team from a school basement crap-shack to a real spacious classroom with a machine shop. Maybe you should investigate my background before asking such questions.
…Before responding to threads negatively…maybe you should ask yourself " Am I really interested in Chief Delphi, or in FRC at large? If not maybe CD is not the place for you. Thank you.
Do you honestly believe that the only value in increasing minority representation on a team is to “win counterarguments”, or are you just concern trolling?
If a team has limited membership, having a slight preference to extending opportunities to students of disadvantaged backgrounds helps both those students and the privileged students on the team. The disadvantaged students get opportunities they may not otherwise have as readily available access to, and the privileged students get exposure to ideas and people of varying backgrounds and experiences that they might not otherwise get to on a robotics team.
Not every team has the ability or capacity to take every student interested in the team, and how teams decide their membership is their business, not yours.
We have a discussion about this very topic within our team each year. We’re an all-girls team. The “easy” answer we often get from new students is that we’re from an all-girls school. But that’s honestly not the right answer for our team. It was a conscious decision not to invite the neighboring all-boys school to be involved. We feel we can provide more inspiration for our students and for the community at large as an all-girls team, and we can back that up with good data - how we interact with other girl-oriented events and organizations in the state (Girl Scouts, a local “Girls in Science” day at the science museum), how we have directly inspired other teams and schools (We’ve helped other teams balance their recruitment so they don’t just get all boys), how we’ve had an impact on the degree demographics from graduates from our school, and how we’ve had an impact on the courses offered within the school.
So maybe she wasn’t upset that you were an all-girls team… maybe she just thought the reasons you were presenting for it weren’t compelling. Work on that sell job!
Equal access and equal opportunity aren’t the same thing. There’s a classic example that definitely applies to teams:
Lets say school gets out at 3. You hold your meetings from 3-7. That’s fine, because the students on your team all have parents that work normal, 9-5 jobs and can pick up their kids afterwards. What you don’t see are the kids who have parents that can’t manage that. The kid that may be interested, but has a single mom that works 2 jobs and is unable to pick him up, so he has no choice but to take the bus home every day. How does your team provide him equal access or opportunity?
There can be tons of other “invisible” restrictions that keep different parts of the community from achieving greatness with or within your team. It’s actually incredibly difficult to identify and address all of those areas to ensure that everyone truly has equal opportunity. As another example…
So, you’ve gotten people involved with the team, lets assume everyone can be at every meeting with no restrictions. How do you give equal opportunity to everyone to become a driver? You can provide time for people to practice driving the robot (or an old one, or a practice bot, etc). But is it really equal opportunity if during those times you ask your most gifted mechanical or programming student to work on a problem the team is having? You know you need them focused on solving the problem to have a good season, and you know they’re the best that can solve it… but by asking them to work on it instead of driving, you deprive them of equal access to practice time. It may be what’s best for the team, and they may not have a problem with it, but it’s still not being equal. Or maybe through the season you subconsciously set an expectation that someone is the leader for the design and build, and they feel obligated to stick to the pit team instead of driving, so they can focus on fixing and improving the robot. Do those expectations placed on them impact their opportunity to be on the drive team?
Regardless of intents, reading this thread has been interesting for me.
I have learned:
That many teams simply don’t consider gender or racial diversity to be a factor when recruiting students or when selecting the drive team, they look only at merits.
That some teams don’t go out of their way to recruit students from minority groups.
That some teams do, either by specifically reaching out to minority groups, or to young women.
That some teams are all-girls or occasionally operate all-girl events or drive teams, specifically to foster those opportunities.
That none of these approaches are incorrect, and that the choice a team makes is largely based on its regional and cultural surroundings.
However, I would say that the real learning is happening as I read your stories about specific team cultures, representations, and ideals. The poll results are difficult to interpret without that context (e.g. is your team “all white drive team” because that’s what you intend it to be, or simply because you live in a mostly white neighborhood?)
I don’t think Oblarg asked the question to call your general interest into question or to attack you in any means, but rather clarifying what population you are interested in for your results. The population of people who will answer your poll on CD is not reflective of FRC. Getting some information on which you can’t draw a conclusion is not always better than no information at all.
Once again, if you read my original post you will learn that I am taking this data to get a glimpse at the minority makeup of drive teams. i’m doing this for my own curiosity.
i’m not asking what teams are doing to give minorities the upper hand. I’m asking what teams are doing to give minorities the same availability and knowledge about first as other non-minority students. It’s obvious that minorities (African Americans specifically) aren’t as prevalent in FIRST as they could and should be, anyone who disagrees either hasn’t been to a FIRST event or is blind.
Data may be skewed, in your opinion but, in mine there definitely are enough active people on chief delphi for me to take some accurate data for myself. I’m not sure what the purpose of your statement was… Unless you expect me to go and physically poll a bunch of teams that don’t use CD.
I respectfully disagree. The real question is what solid information you’re using to base the ideal that CD doesn’t represent enough of FRC for me to take data for my own thoughts.