Cheating in FRC

FIRST General Forum
1

Hey, CD-

I’d like to bring attention to a post made today on r/FRC:

Hello Reddit,

It has apparently come down to this. I was trying to avoid this, but it seems unavoidable.

A little background on our team, I would consider our team a powerhouse team. Usually qualifying for championship, and for most of the past years, we have won atleast one regional win each season.

This is great and all, but our team is cheating. We do not follow the 6 weeks limit. Our mentors justify cheating with “It doesn’t matter as long as the kids learn and have fun.” Now, this is a good point, but the kids (especially me) would have more fun winning and winning honestly. Most of the kids/mentors on our team don’t go on this reddit or CD, in fact I don’t think any of them do, except me.

Additionally, the have been blatantly lieing during chairman’s. Mentors do most of the chairman, and just pull some kids who don’t know much to present. Now, thankfully we haven"t won it yet, but…

This is my second year on the team. I first went along with it, but after the first season, I got very interested in FRC, which led me to here and CD. Then I realized we were cheating.

When I confronted the lead mentor, he essentially ignored me and just tried to keep me as far as away from the team now. He “forgot” to email me about upcoming leadership, and I feel like I should quit right this moment.

Help and many thanks, a concerned member

(TL;DR: Someone’s team is cheating by going over the 6 weeks.)

About 13 hours after this was posted, the OP commented on the thread, saying:

EDIT: Reddit, I am forced to close this thread, as a member of my team regonized the story etc.

Thank you for all the advice: how ever I don’t think I have the courage to report the team.

Despite the OP deciding to refrain from reporting his/her team, I felt it my responsibility to bring this to the FIRST community. Something needs to be done about this. If anyone reading this knows or is a member of the team described, PLEASE report it. Not only is this behavior toxic to the members of the team by degrading their ethical values, it’s toxic to all of FRC because of the legitimate teams that don’t get to go to World Champs because of this illegitimate team. It also spits in the face of Gracious Professionalism.

To clarify: I’m not personally involved with the person whose team is cheating, I’m merely a bystander who thought it important to take action.

2

This is bad. I am really sadden to hear that this is going on in FIRST being a 9 year veteran. I had always wondered if this happened and I am very unhappy to hear that it does.

If anyone has any information on this team, please pass it along here on CD and we will get it to the appropriate people. Even if the person does not have the courage to report it themselves, I will do it for you. PM me.

3

If a participant feels that their own team doesnt follow the strict part of the FIRST rules, I would suggest emailing FIRST directly.
No need to air out dirty laundry here.

Every uncomfortable situation has 2 sides to a story.

Just a suggestion.

4

With the number of folks involved in FRC, there is almost certain to be cheating… If we value honesty in this event, it’s imperative that we confront the offending individuals/teams, etc. If this does not quietly solve the issue, word should be passed up the line - either to your district/regional chairman or to Frank Merrick.

Reports are often going to be a he-said-she-said situation, making any sort of “investigation” difficult. However, if an incident is reported by several different sources, it can be dealt with properly.

Making such reports is especially important if the offending team has a fair amount of competitive success. The last thing we want is for the “only” way for teams to win is by cheating.

And, also, we probably don’t want to go into a lot of detail on CD… Having accusations float around the community without being substantiated will do far more harm than good.

5

How, in precise terms, did this this team cheat? Did they un-bag their robot and work on it? Did they build a practice robot to work on? Did they build parts that could be considered part of the withholding allowance? It’s really difficult to assess the situation without these pieces of information.

On top of this, even if the team in question was blatantly breaking a rule, public shaming is hardly the best way to remedy the situation.

6

+1

7

I saw this yesterday on reddit and didn’t reply because plenty of people had already given gracious and helpful comments regarding the reporting, so I was hopeful that OP had the courage to report. It’s unfortunate that no details were given as to which team this is, but considering that OP was intimidated enough to not report, I feel like this issue may be deeper than we have been told.

If you’re reading this OP, PLEASE report the members of your team who are not being GP about how they lead your program. Yes, it’s YOUR program, not your mentor’s. If you fear harassment from your team for reporting, I recommend seeking a nearby team for guidance, and possibly join them for the season. They may be helpful for reporting and give you the courage to do so.

If there are no reasonably close teams, then maybe reporting and taking a break from their program may benefit you for your sake mentally after reporting. If the problem is somehow resolved, come back to the program.

The other side of this of course, is that this is all anecdotal and only from the perspective of the student, and could be exaggerated. Regardless, it should still be reported. The situation may not be bad enough to remove a mentor, since this is not exactly the best solution to a problem we are not clear about, but if the offending mentors are notified officially from FIRST, there may be a positive change in behavior.

Although I am also curious as to how exactly they’re breaking the 6 week timeline, I’m not as worried about the robot being worked on after stop build as I am worried about how the Chairman’s Award process is allegedly lacking in integrity and student involvement. That completely defeats the purpose and spirit of the Chairman’s Award and if this is indeed how their award is being put together, that is many times over a greater offense than adding robot parts after stop build on the competition bot. After all, it’s not all about the robot.

8

Agreed with all of the above. But ultimately it is up to our own team leadership to self police.

If my team does well but fails to make it to champs, then so be it. We will know that we tried our best and we will strive to be that much better next year. If the reason we didn’t make it is because the team that beat us cheated to get there - well, that’s frustrating and heartbreaking, but does not take anything away from our successes. Now, if we KNOW that team cheated, then of course we will report it. That’s only fair. But otherwise we have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

9

Seek the truth, not what you wish to see.

OP, talk to a person at FIRST, go from there.

Everyone else, don’t jump to conclusions.

Mentors are awesome because they volunteer their time to work with high school kids.

Let’s try to be rational, not reactionary.

-Mike

10

You’re correct in that we do not know how they are actively breaking the rules other than they are “going over the 6 week limit” and it shouldn’t be shamed.

However, this still represents a serious problem, not just for FIRST, but for high school programs as a whole. If adults are willingly and knowingly breaking a rule(s) and the students feel threatened enough to not speak up outside of anonymously posting on a public forum, there’s an issue.

My advice to the student, if he/she is reading this thread. You need to bring this up to parties outside of your adult mentors. Not only should you be alerting FIRST, if you are associated with a school, student center or program (Boys & Girls Club, 4H, etc.), you need to bring this up with administrators. This will give them the opportunity to investigate the problem. If you are worried, talk to your parents/guardians, they, for sure, do not want your experiences ruined by something like this.

I’m not overly bothered by the “over 6 week thing” or the “Chairman’s” issue, as ungracious as it is, but it’s the fact that students (there’s no way it’s only one student who feels disenfranchised by this) are being suppressed by adults, especially when the students know rule-bending might be occurring.

I hope the student(s) the best and this is best handled by reporting it to the proper people, not hiding it.

11

I don’t believe this person is “airing out dirty laundry” at all. This person is clearly in a very difficult situation and is looking for advice. Yeah the obvious answer in this situation is to email FIRST and tell the of the rule violations, but I’m sure that is much easier said than done.

It is clear that this student loves FRC and this could be the only FRC team this student has in the area and could have nowhere to go if FIRST were to do something to their team, or if their team were to find out and they were no longer accepted on the team.

We all know how close we become with our teams, almost like family, even after only one season. Alerting FIRST of this issue could have serious reprecussions for the team and knowing that you could cause that has to be unimaginably difficult.

Imagine the possible effects on this student from the team members on the team who are ok with the cheating if they found out this student alerted first of the cheating.

Although this student may not feel comfortable with telling FIRST of this issue, they have tons of courage to bring this issue to the attention to the FIRST community in the search for advice. I’m sure it is quite easy to turn the blind eye to cheating of this sort. This student having the courage to ask the community for advice, and bringing this issue to our attention shows their love and passion for this sport in keeping it ethical and fair for everyone. Just because they are confused and don’t know what to do, that does not mean they are “airing out dirty laundry”

12

In any organization this large, there’s always going to be a small percentage of people who game the system. It’s inevitable, and you’ll find this all over the place in the real world. It’s an unfortunate reality.

What’s important to maintain the integrity of the organization is that the problem is identified and stopped whenever and wherever possible. This is why so many here are (rightfully) asking OP to notify HQ. Ignoring misconduct breeds more of it, and it’s not long before the honor system is a joke. I expect more from a FIRST team, and I’m sure that everyone else here does as well.

If your team is doing something it shouldn’t, it is your responsibility to stop it. Don’t rely on mentors, administration, or anyone else. Turning a blind eye is sanctioning this behavior. FIRST is what we make it.

13

Personally, I think that it should be handled by FIRST and not in any open forum.

Dinokaiz2, did you at least message OP that you were doing this? If someone recognized it there, someone might recognize it here too. I’m not saying what you did was wrong, but please let him know so he isn’t blindsided by this if someone figures out it was posted here before he does.

14

I apologize if I’m naive but I don’t use Reddit often. The OP may have done it anonymously and there was no contact information.

15

This is exactly why I chose not to contribute to the reddit conversation because plenty of comments had already suggested emailing FIRST to report. I figured OP would solve the issue in this manner, and was seeking help on reddit since OP didn’t know what to do. I didn’t need to contribute to the conversation as I felt that it would be resolved between OP, the team, and FIRST. Now this is on CD and it’s kinda opened up a can of worms. I’d suggest Dinokaiz2 to contact OP if he/she remembers the username, and delete this thread. It is important that more have been notified of the issue, but since what is needed to be said has already been said, there’s no need to keep this up for too much longer. At this point, with how little information we have, we can’t do much other than make the suggestions we have already made. Talking about this issue further in the forum isn’t going to do much to resolve the situation, as CD is not really the place for this. Also I feel for the other students on this team who may have done nothing wrong, and are reading that their team is being seen in a bad light, even if we can’t identify them. The only ones who know are the team members, and us talking about this and possibly jumping to conclusions could further exacerbate the issue and cause more of a problem for more people on that team.

16

The account can still be messaged to at least tell him that this is happening here. I unfortunately can’t message him cause I don’t know his reddit user name. If anyone else has or can get that info, please message him.

-Edit-
I messaged the Mods of r/frc. Maybe they will to get the message to him.

17

To put it bluntly - lying to judges is more common than you’d expect.

On Chairmans:
Exaggerating in Chairman’s is almost expected (we’ll see how the new guidelines impact this) And I know that many teams rely on adults to work on Chairman’s in the same way that they rely on adults in the design and fabrication process. I don’t see this as a problem at all. We are there as mentors not as baby sitters, and we should be leveraging our knowledge and experience to make sure the team produces the best results it can. Now, I don’t think a team where the adults do all the Chairman’s prep work, students present it, and they win at the HoF level is a good result, I also don’t think it’s possible.

But I digress - To me, this is an anonymous poster venting about their perceptions. Reality may be VERY different. If anyone actually involved in the situation would like advice on resolving it: Sit down with the disgruntled party, discuss issues, figure out a plan moving forward. If the disgruntled party wants advice - contact your local Senior Mentor/RD and talk it out with them, they can probably help get you in contact with the right folks.

On Cheating:

Short term, they may win. Long term?

Winning is important. This is a competition. However, winning the right way and being proud of what you have accomplished and how you have accomplished it is more important - See more at: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/blog/first-robotics-competition-and-core-values#sthash.YYaa3nTz.dpuf

18

This bothers me. My team does not lie to judges at all… We also work hard to be accurate in our assessments of our work and deeds for our Chairman’s presentations… You make it sound like we are at a serious competitive disadvantage for being honest… I thought FIRST was supposed to be better than this?

I recognize that, with 3000 teams and tens (hundreds?) of thousands of participants and mentors, some folks will be a bit misguided. But to think that it’s the “norm” does not sit well with me.

19

The student in question did not post it here on CD. Someone else did.

20

My key word for what you quoted me is “allegedly.” For all I know, the student could be interpreting the exaggeration of facts as lies, when they’re just doing basic marketing to make their team look good. Also, the mentor involvement may be seen as excessive when it could indeed be appropriate. OP isn’t a rookie, but still may be inexperienced in the nuances of award submissions and could be misinterpreting what is actually happening.

I was just giving OP the benefit of the doubt.

This is why the reporting is so important. This needs to be sorted out between that team and FIRST, not us. The furthest we should go is make that very suggestion.

I would like this to be my last contribution to this thread, which I hope is removed for the reasons I have stated in my previous reply.