Boston Senior All-Stars Pre-Season Update

[bianca]

[deleted]

[nuclearnerd]

So… are you running a youth team at all, or is this just graduates wanting to play in the off season?

[Andrew_Schreiber]

@bianca

so we’ve been focusing on getting those done, both FRC-specific grants and local grants here in Boston. This

But uh, you’re not an FRC team. So wat?

And actually expanding on this:

Team and Event Search

[bianca]

Youth team, so all new members! All of our members will be the senior class of 2024!

[saikiranra]

@bianca

FRC-specific grants

Is this reasonable (morally and contractually) given that this is essentially a post season demonstration for students who have already gone through the program? It seems busted if a team that serves new high school students and competes during season gets denied a grant if a post season/post grad program gets high school money.

@bianca

Our involvement is mostly with the students that have access to team financials (for things like parts ordering) and for helping the team transport the robot and travel safely.

Do you think doing this reduces the “impact” of the all stars and that future participants won’t have the same opportunities that the first generation did?

[AcesJames]

Are you admitting here that you’re aware your team probably shouldn’t be eligible for these grants based on the “spirit of the rules”, but you’re testing the waters (in bad faith) anyway, and advertising it happily here on CD?

[bianca]

(post deleted by author)

[GregBilletdeaux]

@bianca

Again, we’ll see if our applications are even accepted since we exist in a weird area of almost-FRC.

Do you intend to pay the $6k? Since you’re in the system, it’s safe to assume you’re “accepted”. There isn’t really a universal vetting process.

[Andrew_Schreiber]

Uh, no you don’t. You’re not some special case.

Do you intend to pay for the 2024 FRC season?

If the answer is no to that you are not competing in the 2024 FRC season and applying for grants for teams competing in the 2024 FRC season is, at best, disrespectful to the grant providers.

[Kevin_Leonard]

Aside from potentially taking away grants from New England Teams that need them, my primary issue is that participating in the All-Stars can take seniors away from their teams right when they’re most needed to pass along information to the next generation.

I don’t fundamentally have an issue with some seniors building a robot and competing with it in the Offseason a few times, but I do think the All-Stars as a continuing organization would likely be a net detriment to FIRST teams in the area.

[saikiranra]

@bianca

Again, we’ll see if our applications are even accepted since we exist in a weird area of almost-FRC.

IMO by applying, it seems like you are morally okay with this but probably haven’t done the legwork to ensure that this is legally not fraud.

Personally, the idea of a post-season post-grad exhibition team makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. It seems like a selfish vanity project by privileged community members that eats resources while not really having the broad impact most teams have. The description of what alumni of the program are doing now proves that - every single one is going to a top tier engineering school to pursue STEM. FRC is fun and a great time, but I would recommend y’all figure out how to spend those resources helping underprivileged students who might not have had the same experience/knowledge/passions that you all did when starting the All Stars.

[jtrv]

@bianca

Team structure and leadership was something we knew was going to be tricky in the transition from year to year. We also realized that now that we’re a nonprofit, there’s a lot more record-keeping that needs to be done, including financial and member information that probably isn’t a great idea to throw at new students. To combat this, myself and Alek are now the team ‘Directors.’

So are you mentors to the team?

@bianca

One thing we want to upgrade from last year is our last-minute travel planning. We want our team members to have the easiest and safest travel experience possible. To do that, we’re again working on getting sponsors to make travel costs cheaper for team members. We’re also getting YPP screened both to keep our students safe while traveling and to help find better accommodations. Last year, we found out Summer Heat provides accommodations for teams staying over with a YPP-screened mentor, which we didn’t have at the time (no-mentor team, lol), so we’re taking some of the hassle out of finding a hotel by getting our YPP screening done through FIRST.

YPP screening yourselves does not keep “your” students safe. Actions (or intentional lack of actions) keep students safe. There is nothing about this situation that makes me feel safe.

@bianca

We can’t wait to be back!

Have you considered the impact of a group of graduated people using an event slot that another team might want?

@bianca

Once we’ve got some more sponsorships, we’ll post something about our 2024 sponsors, how we budget our season, and our parts ordering process.

I cannot say I’m thrilled to be competing for local sponsors with an offseason only team of graduates.

[BordomBeThyName]

Pro-tip for recently graduated seniors: You’re college students now. Go do college things and leave FRC behind. There’s a whole world in front of you full of new hobbies and experiences. College is a fun, unique (and expensive) part of you’re life. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you spend your college experience being stuck in high school.

[Andrew_Schreiber]

@saikiranra

legally not fraud

Fraud is an intentional misrepresentation of material fact made to another person with knowledge of its falsity for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies and consequently suffers injury or damage.

At least in the state of MA, if they apply for a grant or represent themselves as an active FRC team it would likely constitute fraud. And, frankly, the posts in this thread would likely be used as evidence.

Look, I don’t care if y’all wanna keep building robots. Poor life choices are what college is for and all that. But maybe try to avoid the type of poor life choices that are both easily avoidable and result in criminal convictions following you around and making getting jobs harder.

[Nate_Laverdure]

There is a lot of criticism above. I will offer some praise…

@bianca

we’re just checking in to make sure their plan is safe, for both them and the robot.

This is great! Please pull on that thread and see what unravels for you!

[Ryan_Blue]

@bianca

almost-FRC.

What does this mean?

[BordomBeThyName]

Rookie team 202400286 begs to differ.

If you’re a post-season team of '23 seniors setting the groundwork for a post-season team of '24 seniors, then my advice is to let go of FRC and give Boston’s class of 2024 the best possible odds of doing the same. Go off into college or your post-high-school life and make the kind of mistakes that you can laugh about with you friends rather than the kind that takes a lot of work for no real benefit.

[NShep98]

Listen, I get it. FRC is fun and cool and exciting. If you’re dead set on continuing the experience, more power to you. I know better than to try and convince anyone otherwise. They’re just going to anyway.

However

You are not an FRC team. You should not be doing or saying anything that could even remotely suggest that you are. This is not a “we’ll just wait and see what happens” scenario. This is a “knock it off before you get in real trouble” scenario.

[AlexUsanov]

Hi all, just wanted to clarify some details here:

So… are you running a youth team at all, or is this just graduates wanting to play in the off season?

777 is a team of students from the Class of 2024 in the Greater Boston area.

Are you admitting here that you’re aware your team probably shouldn’t be eligible for these grants based on the “spirit of the rules”, but you’re testing the waters (in bad faith) anyway, and advertising it happily here on CD?

So far, we have applied for one grant: RTX Charitable Giving Requests. In this grant (and in all others) we represent ourselves as Boston All-Stars, Inc., not as an FRC team.

[…]my primary issue is that participating in the All-Stars can take seniors away from their teams right when they’re most needed to pass along information to the next generation.

Since 777 meetings occur Apr 1 - June 31, there is some overlap with the FRC official season. Last year, this is something we solved by just meeting every day and run with who’s there. Since many All-Stars members’ teams weren’t participating in off-season anyway, many of us were willing and able.

Personally, the idea of a post-season post-grad exhibition team makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. It seems like a selfish vanity project by privileged community members that eats resources while not really having the broad impact most teams have. The description of what alumni of the program are doing now proves that - every single one is going to a top tier engineering school to pursue STEM. FRC is fun and a great time, but I would recommend y’all figure out how to spend those resources helping underprivileged students who might not have had the same experience/knowledge/passions that you all did when starting the All Stars.

Thank you for assuming that we are a group of privileged community members eating resources, but we disproportionately invite communities where STEM is underfunded, and actively produce an educational experience, like how Lynn Tech had trained our members on using precision machining and metal fab instruments.

So are you mentors to the team?

no, we’re directors of an organization who solicits an FRC team in the offseason as an educational opportunity, for FRC seniors who want to collaborate on an inter-team robot.

Rookie team 202400286 begs to differ.

We established a FIRST team account for YPP compliance and TBA listing.

I want to close this message with an apology about the lack of sincerity in the original post. The writing style Bianca adopted for CD posts is unserious and casual, but some content in the original message was written poorly, and as a result was factually incorrect.

[Andrew_Schreiber]

@AlexUsanov

I want to close this message with an apology about the lack of sincerity in the original post. The writing style Bianca adopted for CD posts is unserious and casual, but some content in the original message was written poorly, and as a result was factually incorrect.

Have you corrected all of the factually incorrect details at this point?

@AlexUsanov

no, we’re directors of an organization who solicits an FRC team in the offseason as an educational opportunity, for FRC seniors who want to collaborate on an inter-team robot.

Pedant - no you are directors of an organization who supports graduating seniors to construct an FRC legal bot to compete in off seasons as an educational opportunity. As you are not intending to register with FIRST for any given season you do not meet the requirements to call yourself an FRC team.