Bad behavior in the hotels.

FIRST General Forum
#24

The hotel incident aside, your team should be very worried about this “taboo” about coming into contact with any other member of FIRST who are not on your team. There is a reason there’s a Sportsmanship award where the judges go around asking teams about other team’s good sportsmanship, and why mentoring other teams is encouraged. It is not the intention of FIRST to build isolated teams and vicious rivalries, if that was the case, the game would most likely be one robot against one robot, not two against two, or three against three with constantly shifting alliances.

I hope this “taboo” attitude is only on the part of the students and not the mentors and I hope even more that it can be changed. Chief Delphi is one of the most amazing sources for FIRST that you will come across, and I truly believe that teams that do not have at least one member as a regular poster here are missing out on some great opportunities. After my first year volunteering, I belonged to a robotics team. After my fourth year volunteering, I now have a whole robotics community, and am so much richer for it.

And as for “Andrew”, maybe your team leaders (students and adults alike) need to ask themselves why they have not been able to reach this student to engage him in more participation. And if this is such a bad situation that if affects the whole team the way it appears to, then they need to establish rules to prevent this from happening again.

I’m sorry your team may be blamed for something they possibly didn’t do. Misbehaving teens is a risk all teams face when traveling, I know this because I’ve heard the stories from students who are now alumni, and I am so very, very grateful I did not have to chaperon them and I’ve seen some bad behavior (our students are pretty good now, but they still cause an occasional grousing).

Heidi

#25

It’s rather unfortunate for kids to represent your team like that. :eek: As a student myself… I don’t believe I’ve ever been compelled to do something comepletely irrational. I’d recommend a zero-tolerance/open door policy. Make sure that students who are prone to misbehave are aware that if they do anything to that nature, they’re going home. Also, make sure that their freedom is still in tact. Give them the opportunity to be with friends that were placed in other hotel rooms (whether boy or girl) as long as the door is propped open by an object or the dead bolt. Although we’re “kids”… we’re growing young adults… things will happen, but in the long run, we’re all responsible for our own actions.

#26

It is sad that you have had to face such an event, deal with it smartly.

Firstly, kids are kids. They will do things you don’t like or want. They will do stupid things that could cost you something. They will do things that annoy everyone. They will do things that annoy other members on your own team itself. That is the first thing all mentors should understand because sooner or later there will be such kids on the team. It is almost inevitable. How many times is it that in a high level class(AP? Honors?) you find some kid asking absolutely stupid questions? It’s just the way things work.

With that said, you need to learn to deal with it. On our team, we do give them some room to have fun. They know they are responsible for their actions and so they learn to control themselves at times. If by any chance they do go overboard, we send them back home on the next flight at the cost of their own parents + any cost they have to pay for damage. This includes bad behavior.

All in all, it is a competition with high school kids participating.

#27

Teams should start taping their members into the rooms. I was on a team for 4 years and each night we had a curfew and were taped in our rooms. If the tape seal was broken the next morning from us opening the door, we were in trouble!

Good times trapped in the motel room(s). Nintendo 64, Mt. Dew, and a ceiling fan…you do the math!

Lol those who were with me on the team know!

Ask Elgin about the time he broke a monorail.

#28

April 2002… the Championship in Florida… don’t know names or team numbers, but some loosely-chaperoned robotics students thought it would be funny to remove the tape from all of the taped doors they saw…

Heidi

#29

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiki
If I find out my team has to suffer because of another team’s wrongdoing, I will take some kind of action.

Doesn’t mean they mean’t something bad by this post, it could simply mean they will talk to someone at FIRST or a person’s teacher or mentor.
They might just be referring to taking some appropriate action.

#30

Thats probably not the best way to do this. We had a problem with students leaving their rooms, on the last night of our trip… those students were required to individually present an apology to the entire team… and I’m fairly certain that they will never leave their rooms again.

Tape just doesn’t seem like a good idea… it will only encourage them to do stupider things… going off the balconies is one thing I wouldn’t doubt someone would try. Or through the ceilings, if the hotel has a dropped ceiling.

There’s a thread about this somewhere else… not too sure where though

#31

Yes, you definitely don’t want to tape kids in a room. What do you know, they might jump out of the window? Some kids are stupid enough to do things like that. Figure out other ways because there are.

#32

Actually you could just tape the windows. Any other possible scenario will result in people going splat against the pavement in an attempt to escape.

#33

It is shamefull that anyone would act like that. I gaurentee that 1549 would never act like that. We look foreward to seing alla u down the hall someday!

#34

Uh, I was under the assumption that they were using a small piece of tape as a tripwire… not really possible to do with windows, unless the teacher/mentor wants to climb down from the balcony :slight_smile:

#35

OMG That would be hilarious seeing one of our teachers out hangin over the balcony taping the window. knowing them theyd end up tripping it themselves or find no way to get infrom the balcony after they taped it. :smiley:
Man we’d have to get our camra guy on it.

-Crash

#36

I have almost posted in this thread so many times. Once again I would like reiterate whomever’s point that it is the job of the mentors to discipline students. If your students act inappropriately on a trip, I don’t care what hour of the night, the parents need to be called and the child sent home at the expense of the child and his/her family. It’s inappropriate and that’s all that needs to be said. FIRST is a privilege, not a right and students are expected to act with such a level of maturity.

#37

It’s one thing to mess with your team, mentors, and other teams who want to have fun.

For students, just think about this question before you do something stupid:

“Is this worth possibly getting my ______ kicked by the people inside?”

My team probably wouldn’t fight anybody over something stupid like knocking on a door and being annoying, but we have 4-5 guys who would have no problem pulling somebody by their shirt and getting in a kid’s face to tell them to stop being idiots.

As far as the tape, our school had a trip to Philly and the teachers put stacks of soda cans by the doors and the kids would knock them over when the doors opened. Eventually we realized if we place the cans a little more to the left of the door, the door would clear the cans and the teachers wouldnt pay attention the cans were moved to the left when they picked them up in the morning.

When the teachers figured it out, everynight one kid would go kick every pile of soda cans over, that way the teachers had no clue who really left their room and who didn’t. The teachers eventually figured out the students did it just to tick them off, because the hotel windows faced a drive thru movie theater that showed XXX movies after 11pm, and the boys wouldn’t leave their rooms and would talk to the male teachers about the movies on the big screen the night before.

Students will almost always find a way to sneak out, even if they have nowhere to go, people will sneak out just to see if they could leave the room without getting caught.

#38

I was under the assumption that it’s there to ensure that no one went outside. It’s impossible for anyone to reseal the door once you broke it from the inside thus the mentors know where you have been.

#39

The fact that the teachers even need to seal the doors is terrible! Can’t we be mature enough to stay inside when we should? Maybe if the teachers didn’t actually set so many limits no one would be motivated to break them… I don’t know… just a thought. We should all know the limits. I know I’ll just want to rest after a full day of competition. I don’t think anyone who isn’t flat out exhausted at the end of the day, and still has energy to fool around should be on the team. Because they obviously aren’t contributing enough, just wasting the team time, and money. I’m not going to work my butt off raising money so someone can go to Atlanta and do nothing but fool around after competition. Let’s grow up. If you’re not discussing strategy or something, you shouldn’t be out of the room. If your coversation isn’t a friendly one, be quiet, and get back in your room. It’s as simple as that. Can I get an amen?

#40

last year at UCF i put a 16" with zach “tripping on me” and we checked the same room this year and they turned it into a storage room.

#41

I’ve always thought Band students would act worse then FIRST Teams…Our Marching Band stayed over night for festivle (120+ kids) and had no problem with people doing stupid things…we didn’t even have chaperones in the rooms. There were a few rooms of chaperones down the hall, but thats it. All they did was check to make sure we were in our room around 11:00 pm then they went to bed.

If a student is involved in FIRST, they should be able to handle themselved in a professional manner. If I was in the position of a mentor and had to deal with students misbehaving…
1st Infraction: Private Conversation with student and mentors.
2nd Infraction: Phone Call Home/Loss of Practipation for rest of event and season.
3rd Infraction: Expulsion from team (like school expulsion where you have to appeal to get back on and stuff).

#42

You’re half right and half wrong.

The mentors shouldn’t need to monitor us 24/7. My team’s mentors are cool and realistic, and they expect us to be realistic back. Most FIRST teams are like that, but out of the 300 teams, probably 20 will have kids that are complete idiots and completely wild. I have a feeling most advisors aren’t going to tape kids in their room’s simply for the fact they trust their kids, and if their kids leave their room it’s for a good reason. (Like to get soda or candy out of a machine)

As far as not leaving the room except to talk stratgey and stuff is a little bit too much to ask. I’m sure the mentors of my team are going to be jokeing around and hanging out with the team 228 mentors, I’m goiing to be with friends from another team, theirs so much more stuff to do than worry about the compeition after you’re in the hotel. Even if your robot is majorly damaged, no sense dealing and worrying about stuff that you can’t change or fix until the next day. When we get to atlanta we have semi-major problems to figure out, but we won’t let that stop us from going bowling and having fun the night before the compeition or the nights of the compeition. If you’re worrying about robotics and stratgey 24/7 then it’s almost more stress than fun and not worth going.

Just my $0.02

(When i say “you”, “your”, “you’re” I mean people in general not speaking directly to BaldwinNYRookie)

#43

People should be mature enough to know how to act in a hotel. Its unreasonable to expect everyone to do so all the time (heck, anyone can start talking a little louder subconsciously, laughing loud etc), and I understand that, but if you know you’re being annoying, go outside or at least stop doing it. I was unfortunate enough to be sitting in my hotel at the Midwest regional reading a book, and there was a really loud disturbance that was going on for at least 2 minutes. After about 30 seconds of being distracted, I slipped my shoes on and walked outside. They even apologized for the noise, but once I was back in they just continued to do it. At that point I just gave up.

But really, is it that hard to realize that people are trying to sleep in a hotel? It was only about 8:45, but still, its extremely impolite to be making such a racket, especially after you know you’re consciously making it. I couldn’t really tell what they were doing, but it wasnt just talking and laughing it was something else.