Difficult Conversation: Negative experiences in FIRST

[jwareham]

This was not what I was planning on my first post to be, but I think it is important for this discussion to take place, given everything that’s going on regarding IFI and YPP issues. I see the community looking to make change, and I think this is a way we might be able to take action, if people truly understand how widespread of an issue this stuff is.

I’ve created this post for people, if comfortable, to come forward about their experiences facing oppression, harassment, or other negative things in their time in FIRST. I think the conversation needs to be had. Sending solidarity to everyone brave enough to share, and for anyone who can’t, know that I see you and you aren’t alone.

As a start, I will share my experiences. I am a queer, disabled and neurodivergent student. I’ve been afraid to come forward about things because it’s already hard enough sticking out and being different, but I want people to be heard. I think it’s especially important because I now am in a role where some students look up to me as a role model, and I want them to feel understood and seen. With that, I’ll begin. As a student, I was sexually harassed by a mentor. This mentor knew what they said was inappropriate, even admitted it. I was absolutely horrified and overwhelmed. Also in my time in FIRST, I was exposed to transphobia from former team members. This was not the fault of most of the team or mentors at all, and my mentor who I handled it pretty well, but it was definitely jarring to encounter in this space. I’ve also heard a variety of ableist, homophobic, and transphobic remarks at competitions over the years. I have received passive agressive comments about the pride flag I have worn at competitions. I have also been followed out of events on two different occasions by masculine-aligned people, both times as a student. On one of those occasions, that person was a mentor. These are just the experiences I am comfortable coming forward about, there many more I’m not comfortable with sharing.

This isn’t to say I don’t love FIRST. FIRST Canada, and many of the people who work for them, as well as many other mentors and volunteers I know have made me have an overall wonderful experience in the league. FIRST Canada, as well as the organizers of Robots at CNE and STEMly cup, my many friends, and my fellow 3739 mentors, have worked hard to make sure my disabilities are accomodated for. Overall I’ve had a positive experience in FIRST, but I figure it’s important I don’t brush the negative experiences under the rug. Rocking the boat is sometimes the only way to make change for the better.

[mangohighchew]

Thank you for creating this. People need spaces to share what happened if we expect a culture shift to ever happen.

As for my experience, I don’t want to share too many details as it will trace everything back to me and that’s not something I want. Facing homophobic, sexist, and racist remarks from other members of the program is sadly something I became used to in my second year. These didn’t stop as time went on, I just got used to ignoring them. I had always been told that FIRST was a safe space, but I never felt it until my final year.

That was, of course, until I had the misfortune of encountering someone I wished I would never see again. I was hurt by someone in the past, and I had changed my entire life to avoid this person. So when I walked into a competition to see them there, on another team, when that team should have been aware of what happened, it absolutely shocked me. I wasn’t able to function properly for the rest of that competition sadly, and didn’t get to enjoy it with my team like I hoped I had.

I know there’s been a lot of talk about making sure the mentors are safe, but mentors, please please make sure you’re aware of the type of students you are allowing on your teams. The person had hurt many others besides me, and it wasn’t a hidden fact. If a student expresses discomfort, please listen to them so we can make first a safer place for all involved.

[jwareham]

I’m really proud of you for coming forward about your experiences.

[Omuzder]

This is always a difficult topic to broach, and I’m proud of the person you have grown up to be. This post has brought my account out of retirement, as there is always work to be done to improve our student support system. By sharing my story I hope to inspire others to share theirs so we can heal and move forward as a community.

My personal experience was a series of great mentors and one or two not-so-great mentors. Many of these inspired me, but unfortunately some taint the memory of high school robotics. In my grade 11 season, the head coach of the team I was on purposefully didn’t submit any of the work done by myself or others for awards, including Dean’s List or Woodie Flowers. This individual purposefully denied the work done by myself and the other team leads, to the point where I built most of the robot that year in my parent’s house – not the classroom. The day after our regional, they quit, blaming the students for a poor season and no awards. They blamed the people they were supposed to inspire, causing many to leave the sport and never return. My parents had to pick up the slack as the school did not support FIRST in the wake of the mess, and we spent the following 3 years looking for a permanent home for our little team. During that time, we were able to inspire and help nearly a hundred and fifty young professionals that came through our door, meeting at the dinner table and building in the driveway. But had a teacher stepped up instead of backing away, we could have done so much more. Helped so many more people. Changed the local culture that much more effectively. Going door-to-door raking leaves for spare change to raise registration fee money is one heck of a teacher, and one heck of a roadblock.

I can go into more detail about that particular former mentor, but they proved to be a monster years later, and that isn’t my story to tell. What I can say is that it made me distrust authority figures greatly, and motivate me to be a better mentor if only to prove myself in contrast of that person. Five years to the day after they quit 3739, we won the Chairman’s Award at the district event hosted in part by my co-captain Bryce and my inspiration Eugen Porter. Both of them have been guiding lights in my journey through robotics and while Bryce is no longer with us, I hope he’s proud of the work the next generation of students are doing.

We are what they grow beyond.

[Veeryuk]

Thank you Jamie for giving a space to allow people to share their experiences. As I look into the past, I can think of one instance that has definitely stayed in my head. I am not going to name the team or anyone in this as I think they could learn from it if they see it.

In the past year, I was talking to another mentor about some DEI stuff with a lot of it talking about how to make a team more inclusive to LGBTQ+ people. As a person who is out as non-binary and also as gay along with being a LGBTQ+ of FIRST Ambassador, I was ecstatic to give information that would have made me comfortable when I was a student navigating through all of it. I know first hand how hard it is to feel welcome as it took me awhile to learn what it was like to feel accepted.

When I started talking to this mentor, one story stuck out to me. They told a story about 2 kids on their team that happen to be gay and dating. Obviously as teen relationships are, there was a bit of PDA like holding hands at build meetings and stuff like that. When some mentors caught wind of this, they immediately started complaining about it that they shouldn’t be doing things like holding hands at a competition as it might “harm the teams reputation”, “they need to be professional at comps” and other things of that nature. However, the same scrutiny was never given to the other straight couples on the team.

Hearing this absolutely horrified me. I know what it’s like to be stuck in the closet because of not feeling safe and how good it is to be out of it. It’s something that is mentally draining every day to have to hide who you are just because someone doesn’t like it. No student should have to be shoved back into the closet at all because it “might look bad on the teams reputation”. We should be accepting those students for who they are and making sure that robotics is a safe and welcoming environment as that can have a huge impact on a persons mental health.

For me, robotics was and still is my safe space, where I can be myself and be passionate about things that I enjoy. It helped me keep going mentally each day during the pandemic, to be surrounded by people online who had similar interests and were able to support me as I figured myself out (shout out to Jamie for helping me figure out that I am non-binary in the middle of a VC call on a Discord server). It helps me keep going now that I am a college student, that I am helping students feel welcomed and knowing that they have support behind them as they figure out themselves.

Please for anyone that is mentoring a team with LGBTQ+ students, make sure that they feel welcomed, that they know they are loved and supported for who they are, that they can come to you in their time of need if something happens like homophobia, transphobia, etc.

[CanadianDoggo]

Thank you for make a friend we could share these experiences in. I like to say overall my experiences have been positive. That doesn’t mean it’s without issues. Post Champs 2022, there were several responses I gave about LGBTQ issues in competitions, but I think its important to bring them up again as we get closer to competition season.

1. Bathrooms at competions. I get its a hard issue to fix often times, but still a negative experience. I love the competition so much but every time I have to walk into that room labeled “men”, it really does detract from the experience. This is more of a venue by venue issue, but still an issue, and especially at events like Champs FIRST really could do more to fix.

2. Transphobia sucks lol. The first time I tried to come out to the team, I wore a name tag to competition with my preferred name and pronouns. At competition, and adult grabbed my nametag, looked at it, laughed at it, then immediately referred to me by “he”. That alone made it a struggle to get through the rest of that competition while looking people in the eye.

Plenty of microaggressions occurred too, but thats just an aspect of life for any marginalized minority. I really hope going forward things can get better for those who come after me.

[flamingIce]

I never thought I would do this. Thank you Jamie for this post, I created a CD account just to add my story to it. I’ll be vague, but for starters the team I’m about to talk about is dead due to many factors, this being one of them.

My experience started off as an amazing time I won’t forget, but it changed for the worse as the years went on. As leadership changed, I started being told I was a failure and couldn’t do anything right by my mentors and peers. They caused me to have my first mental breakdown which became a common occurrence since I wasn’t the “perfect example” my mentors wanted. The mentors picked favorites and those favorites treated me horribly due to not meeting forced standards. My code wasn’t enough, my work on Chairman’s wasn’t enough, nothing I did was worthy of anything to them. They mentally and emotionally mistreated me for years. They even caused my mom to breakdown when they yelled at her since I “didn’t obey”. I took it all since I loved FIRST so much, but deep down I was being numb and broken.

During my senior year, I became a part of the leadership team as a student lead, acting as one of the voices for my teammates. Soon I came to learn that my teammates secretly told other teams in the district about how I was a terrible teammate, how useless I was, and that I shouldn’t be on the team. The mentors would also go behind the team’s back to discuss how awful the student designs were. I got cursed at by mentors since I wasn’t “being obedient” even I did everything I could for the team. Eventually after having many mental breakdowns at competitions and meetings, I was taken off of leadership for “not being worthy.” I almost quit the team after that but stayed to finish out the year. The mentors would eventually let the boyfriend of a teammate join as a mentor, breaking YPP rules in the process. What rules you ask? Well, the rules about how mentors can’t date students. This boyfriend joined in with the mistreatment as the season came to a close. He smack talked me in front of my friends and family as his partner watched from the side.

I did end up reporting everything to the school, but they did nothing. They wanted a successful team over anything so I graduated only to realize that people who mistreated me were still on the team. Even my parents reported to the school the situation, but again nothing was done. It was mostly covered up by the other parents on the team with powerful connections within the school.

For those that read this, know that you can report mental and emotional mistreatment. Mentors should never cuss out students or continuously tell them they’re failures. These kinds of people don’t deserve to work with kids. Many mentors do their best to shape kids for the better while others ruin kids’ futures.

Hopefully my story helps someone. Just remember - you’re your own person regardless of what others say. You can find people to trust, even in the most odd places. You are strong beyond belief.

[NewtonCrosbyJr]

Forewarning: This post is going to be intentionally vague to protect the privacy of all people and parties involved, and it may be difficult to follow, and I apologize for that. This is not my story, but the experience of my best friend, who struggles with challenges related to mental health, as well as having a sibling who deals with similar problems and a few others as well. Also, this wasn’t a negative FIRST experience per se, it just happened to a member of an FRC team. I still feel this is necessary to share, because I see similar things happening to other people in the FIRST community way too often. To those who are being oppressed by others: find support in others. It sounds cliché but it is proven by science to be an amazing first support mechanism. If you are one of the bullies and are reading this (everyone here seems nice and I doubt anyone is a bully here): Use this to see just how bad you are hurting others. Even if you are trying to deal with your own problems, it’s not okay to bring others down. Something you might see as a joke can be someone else’s deepest fears, and know the damage you deal is potentially deep and permanent.

Some extra background: I am not zoned for the school that I attend FRC at, because my father is a mentor of that team. I don’t really know any people in that area except for the team members, so I was not fully aware of every circumstance in play at the time. Subsequently, I did not know just how difficult this person’s situation was. I did everything I could to help my friend during his trials, only having his interests in mind during the decision making process. If anyone thinks my actions were not the “right solution” please PM me and explain what and why. I do not have the same struggles that this person was going through, and do not always know what is or isn’t appropriate for certain situations. Any insights on what I did wrong are extremely valuable, and will only help me support my friend better if the problems arise again. Also, me using “them” for this person’s pronoun in this story is just for their anonymity. This person does identify with a binary gender.

So, the year was 2019. I had been attending robotics meetings since 2015 because I was interested in the topic and my father was (still is) a mentor for the team I currently compete on. 2019 was my first year “fully” on the team because it was my first year of high school. During middle school, I was bullied a lot for the person I was (I was as nerdy as a nerd could be) and it caused me many different forms of negative emotions that I didn’t really know how to deal with them. I went into my first “official” year of FRC with mixed feelings. I knew that I would already know most of the people there; the same mentors from my first time being there in 2015, the underclassmen from previous competition years, or the alums that came back after their high school years were done. There were also going to be a lot of new people there, too. At first I just stayed in my own bubble, but one time in a pre-season meeting, I heard these two people talking about Star Wars (a topic I happen to be very passionate about) vehicles, going into the actual mechanics of how they work in cannon. I immediately joined the conversation, excited to have other people to talk about random obscure star wars canon or other nerdy topics of the like. These two people quickly became some of my best friends on the team, we talked a lot and just had so much to relate about. We all were very socially awkward (we all had our own reasons), we all liked obscure nerd stuff, and we all liked robotics. 2019 was, to put it lightly, an absolute crap show as we all know. We only got in our two normal competitions (we were week 1 and 2 for our comps) before the season was shut down, but we got a blue banner at our first comp which was the first one that our team had ever gotten. We were all pretty psyched about it, and at that point we were all still hopeful that covid was just going to turn out like a bad flu season or something, just gone in a few weeks or so. Once we hit full shutdown mode, the existing friend triangle still tried to hang out online, playing games and talking. Just after the start of the fully virtual school year, that’s when things got hectic. People didn’t have much to do, so naturally, all of the existing ethical issues, societal problems, and social movements escalated. Politics became hyper-aggressive, minorities started speaking out more (that is a good thing, the “problems” that arose came from how certain people responded to different things), and since in-person harassment was no longer viable, bullies and other troublemakers all shifted to the internet. Cyberbullying was already a major issue, but the new social environment only made things significantly worse. Me, having experience with bullying, did everything I could to support those who felt attacked. During the online school year, one of my friends from the 2019 friend triangle stopped hanging out with us online. I reached out privately to ask if they were okay, and his response was along the lines of “I’m fine, school is just giving me a lot of work”. Since this exchange was over a Discord DM, I couldn’t tell that things were not fine for them. Even over breaks in the school year, they wouldn’t hang out with us. I started to get worried, and tried reaching out again and got the same response each time. Then it was 2021. School was back to being in person, and robotics started back up. The friend trio was finally able to meet in person again! We were all extremely excited to meet back together. Even the friend who had shown the radio silence was messaging us about how they couldn’t wait to see us again. The first time back was really fun, we all caught up about the stuff we did over the long break. I could immediately tell something was off about the friend that I was worried about. After a meeting, I took that person aside and asked them what was wrong. They first said nothing, but I knew that wasn’t true. I told them that I knew something was wrong by the way they were acting and that I wanted to help. They shared that people were bullying them and their sibling, who is transgender. They said how they were bullied for being related to “a [very bad slur] and being a generally weird person”. I offered what comfort and council that I could, telling them that if they ever needed someone to talk to, I would be there. They spent a lot of time talking to me about everything. They way they felt that day, or how much it hurt them to see their sibling going through so much adversity. After a while, I recommended they reach out to a school official to contact this person, because their school had a 0-tolerance policy for any form of harassment. We gathered all of the digital evidence that we could (the bullying started online), and they presented it all to a school admin. The bully was confronted and issued very severe punishment, and my friend was free from the bully’s behavior.

This is a message to any down-trodden people who are victims only because of their identity. You aren’t alone. There are thousands, if not millions of others that understand your adversity and are going through the same things. It will be difficult, but you must speak out. To suffer in silence is to submit to whatever is torturing you. If school officials will not help you due to whatever circumstance, then you must escalate the problem. People are extremely vulnerable to social pressure, so use that to your advantage. Call that person out in public spaces, online or in person. Rally those who are going through the same troubles around you. Be your own force for change. If you believe your actions wouldn’t affect anyone, you are dead wrong. Alone, you might not inspire change in others, but if you can rally a movement around a cause, you can be a great force for change. Just being a beacon for others to follow is a great thing in and of itself. Your impact makes you a great person, even if you don’t see the change yourself.

Mod edit: corrected one pronoun to “they”

PS: I use school years when referring to time because I count the preseason meetings that our team has to the current season, so infinite recharge was 2019-2020, not just 2020. Also I call '21 the covid year because that was the entirely virtual year at my school district. Don’t know if it was different for yall.

[ChanceT]

I’ve had a few… experiences.
I am non-binary but I look pretty feminine due to an unsupportive household. I’ve told my team many times. One of the lead members is amazing about it, she’s known me for so long, but doesn’t slip up with my name or pronouns (often) and when she does she corrects herself. The two people who help out (as mentors, every now and then. tbf they are the lead mentors kids.) are super good about it.

One mentor has just… acted like I am a girl. One of the students are good about it, but the rest… they treat me like a girl. They act like I don’t know anything, when we agreed on not doing something they went behind my back when I wasn’t there and did it.

I got called bossy and aggressive for trying to keep my team on track. (Long story short they were sitting there on their computers and I said “There’s a to-do list in google classroom and emailed to you both, can you take a look?”)

At the end of last year I tried to get us to fundraise (even two of the mentors said we needed to), suggesting idea after idea and saying when the fundraisers would be. I stopped several times asking people what their ideas were, what they thought, etc. When I was told that I was being too much I asked the team, “Well, what are your ideas then?” I understand it sounded sarcastic, but we had no money left and everytime I asked people what they thought I was met with a chorus of I Don’t Know’s.

I’ve had other teams at events just ignore me when I tried to plan a match with them. Those same teams would listen intently to our male drive coach, who had on several occasions told me to go find out what those teams wanted to do.

Background: We were a defensive bot. I had a mentor (one of my teams) go off of what he saw that day saying we should do things a certain way (as a strategy). However, I had literally watched hours of videos of the teams and was appointed by our drive coach (who couldn’t make it that day) as the drive coach in his absence because I understood the entire field and teams. He proceeded to grab the drive coach pin from our table, and loudly talk over me the entire day. (I had the operator badge) Our driver just looked at me after in my hotel room and asked what happened, because he knew I had tons of information about the other teams. I had discussed on our way up who was the heavy hitters and if we were against them what was the best strategy for them not to score. Our (normal) drive coach the day after asked what happened, because we had gotten penalties, weren’t nearly as efficient as normal, and “looked like a chicken with its head cut off” during that day. I just shrugged and said I wasn’t drive coaching, walked off to an area my team couldn’t see me and cried, because it felt like I had let down my team.

That same day I was constantly told to fetch things and cut off while I was talking. At the end of the day, I ended up needing help to go from my hotel room to the hotel lobby where we were eating dinner because all the running around triggered a hypermobility issue flare up. My hip was popped out of place and I had to KT tape it, my knee, and my shoulder that night. I had to eat with my left hand at dinner due to my right shoulder not responding. That day I was repeatedly pushed past my limits and ignored when I said I needed a break. Our driver was fantastic and helped me through it, saying he was taking a break to eat, so that we could both leave the pit and I could eat something.

At one point I was sitting under a table digging through our bins of stuff cleaning off grease from our weights because I was just tired of fighting with my team to be seen. (I do have to say our driver was fantastic and always tried to help, and the previously mentioned “good” mentors were either in the stands or not there.) Another team came over asking to meet our safety captain (that same day) and the team looked around (not our driver) and said “I don’t where she is.” The other teams safety captain saw me and cocked an eyebrow like “are you who I’m looking for?” since I had the badge on. So I said “I’m down here.” The other teams safety captain came over and knelt next to me and we chatted about our teams safety measures.

So yeah… have fun and listen to your teammates.

[Jon_Stratis]

In 2013, I was on the verge of quitting my team. I had, for 5 years at that point, been working hard to try to restrain another mentor who took things too far and was way too hard on the students. My self and a third mentor had talked about quitting the summer before because of this other mentor, but decided that we needed to stick it out for the kids. The situation was complicated by the fact that he was married to the team’s lead mentor at the time, a teacher at the school.

The breaking point was our first competition. We had a few struggles that this mentor was putting entirely on our driver (it wasn’t the drivers fault). After each of the matches, if we didn’t perform perfectly, he would go back to the pit and berate the driver, often reducing her to tears. In one case, he actually said “If I were you, I’d be crying right now”. For those wondering how we did at the competition, don’t bother with TBA - we ranked 4th and were picked the first seed - but it wasn’t worth the emotional toll it took on our driver.

At some point during the event, I ended up calling down the other teacher from the school working with us to talk about him. I let her know what was happening, and that despite the fact that it was a difficult situation with the lead mentor, it was him or me. I wasn’t going to keep being a part of a team that allowed that type of behavior.

While there was no official announcement, he claimed “work” to skip our second competition, and then stepped back from mentoring after the season (incidentally, he worked with a different team the following year, and a third team the year after before stopping completely). At one point during that second event, our driver actually said to me “I know we’re doing worse, but I feel so much better”. Totally worth it.

I say all this to say: all it takes is one person to poison an environment and a team culture. Too many of us (myself included!) suffer with it and just try to handle it as best we can. Instead, we need to either find a way to resolve the situation (which usually means finding help!), or to prioritize our own mental health and remove ourselves from the situation. As much as we all love FIRST, it’s not worth it when it makes us suffer.

[Oblarg]

I was on the fence about sharing this experience, since it seems kind of minor in the face of the revelations we’ve been seeing recently, but I figure the point of this thread is to speak my truth about my experiences even if they feel small.

In late 2012, I began mentoring team FRC 4464 - a local community team that had started near the University of Maryland. The team had a collection of homeschoolers and students who had no FRC team available at their school, and the university solicited help from local alumni to get the team on their feet. I had just returned from two years solidly away from FRC (my first two years of undergrad were at CU Boulder, across the country) and I decided to get involved.

The team had very few resources (alumni mentors were purchasing things out of pocket, and I was borrowing liberally from 449’s storeroom). We were able to acquire an old drivebase from a local DC team (1915) for preseason training (little more than “how to assemble a chain drive”), and we hobbled together a basic machine shop with a drill press and miter saw. Early in build season, a friend of the team (an old-school print shop machinist, friend of one of the parents) stepped in to offer manufacturing help, and with his aid we built a fairly competent full-court shooter. It was not perfect, but it was competitively viable.

We seeded for elimination at the 2013 DC regional, winning Highest Rookie Seed and Rookie All-Star. It was the first time I had ever been to World Championships.

World Championships were, for the most part, great. The students were elated to even be there, even if our “competitive at Regionals”-tier robot was not very viable at Worlds-tier play. We were happy for the opportunity to be there and to learn.

Eventually, I made my way to the supplier showcase. VexPro had a booth staffed by interns with cool, exciting demo pieces of their new product lines (remember - VexPro was fresh on the scene at the time, upsetting what was previously a near AndyMark monopoly). I was excited to chat with VEX employees about the new product line, and in particular to get some ideas for cost-effective ways to integrate the products into low-manufacturing-overhead designs.

Unfortunately, the interns staffing the booth sussed out within a few minutes that I was a mentor of a rookie team without a machine shop or much money. The elitism and disrespect they showed nearly ruined my entire day. Queries about low-resource manufacturing techniques were met with derision (I do not remember the actual words, but the sense was very much “why don’t you have access to a full CNC machine shop? you must not be trying.”). I tried to broach some ideas I had for replacing aluminum parts in typical FRC designs with laser-cut delrin (at the time, the only precision machining I had access to was a 60-watt ULS cutter in a lab at UMD); again, the attitude was entirely dismissive.

(Bafflingly, the attitude towards the merchandise itself seemed similarly dismissive; I got the feeling that the interns staffing the booth felt they themselves were above most of the COTS products they were there to represent to teams. Perhaps not a great sales strategy?)

I returned home that year, checked Chief Delphi, and the first discussion I saw was a string of complaints about low-resource teams dragging down the quality of the competition. It stung, badly. This was the first time I had ever felt unwelcome in FIRST, and it came on the heels of the first time I had ever been able to take a group of students to World Championships. To say the experience was jarring would be an understatement.

I have more perspective now, and the memory does not bother me so much anymore. But I think these kinds of experiences are probably more common than people care to admit; and I think they cumulatively build towards a culture that is contrary to FIRST’s goals and aspirations.

[Christopher149]

@Oblarg

Queries about low-resource manufacturing techniques were met with derision…
Bafflingly, the attitude towards the merchandise itself seemed similarly dismissive; I got the feeling that the interns staffing the booth felt they themselves were above most of the COTS products they were there to represent to teams.

Ironic, since the versaframe line is specifically meant to be useful for those with low manufacturing resources.

[Alex_Y]

This is a slightly different problem than with the other posts, but anti-freshman beliefs, even as jokes (WHICH ARE NOT HARMLESS!!!) ruined my first year of the program and is a problem that is as far as I am aware is too common on too many other teams.

I remember in my first year as a student I had a terrible experience due to an a negative team culture around freshman. During my first year, I wasn’t allowed to do anything meaningful. I couldn’t have any design input, I couldn’t be told why anything I was doing wrong was bad, only being told some form of “because I said so”. I wasn’t allowed to do any interesting or meaningful manufacturing, only deburr parts, pull hundreds of pop-rivets (I am not strong and don’t care about that), and if I was lucky fix parts that other people messed up. I wasn’t taught what was being done and why things were being done. I wasn’t taught how do design things despite expressing a strong desire of wanting to do so (I had to teach myself in the 2019 offseason). The robot my team ended up that season didn’t feel like it was “mine”, or more like I didn’t get to do anything meaningful about it or contribute to its success in any way shape or form.

And when the completions came around, we didn’t do well. Our bot could barely manipulate either gamepiece in 2019 and had a really unreliable hab3 climb. I felt terrible because I knew that we could’ve done so much better if I wasn’t shut out in during the build season that we could’ve done so much better. It wasn’t my failure that resulted in our poor performance, it was that I was never given a chance to make anything do well. All because I was a freshman (which I had no control over). Its not like I even made that many mistakes, as most of our problems that caused poor performance was bad design, which I had no input on. But yet always had mistakes blamed on me bc I was a freshman.

It just sucked that in my first year of FRC, I might as well not have existed. I wasn’t needed (side note, we were a small team of only like 20ish students) and didn’t get to do anything. For some reason I didn’t quit. If I did quit I would’ve been in a much worse position than I am in right now (and right now I am still not in a good position), but knowing that I was this close to quitting due to bad culture that was allowed to perpetuate hurts. In later seasons, that’s when I got to learn and make the mistakes, but its all stuff I should’ve been able to do my first season. It just feels terrible knowing that my second season experience (which was a bit more average) was more like what my first season should’ve been like. And because of that, it felt terrible because the mistakes I made were ones I made only because I didn’t get the chance to make them and learn in my first season.

And experiencing just how quickly our team improved after most of the students cycled out in the 2020 season just shows how much of a detrimental effect the anti-freshman culture had on the team. By the time I graduated, my team was in a much better spot that it was earlier. Not because of an increase in resources, not because of any new mentors, not even because we have more students, but because I managed to help purge the anti-freshman culture that ruined my first years and prevented students from both making the most out of the FRC experience and prevented students from reaching their potential.

The main takeaway is to not just shut people out, especially for things outside of their control. “Jokes” that make fun of freshman are 100% unacceptable. I don’t care a single bit how the people giving them feel, on the receiving end its demoralizing and that alone makes it not okay. I will call out any little bit of anti-freshman culture and blaming them for people’s problems because its not ok. Its not funny. It was detrimental to my FRC experience and will continue to harm every student’s FRC experience as long as it continues to be accepted. Every FRC student is a freshman at some point, they shouldn’t be hated or treated unfairly because of it.

[ALoud]

First I would like to say that I am proud of you for having the courage to share your story. I am now a mentor and openly encourage my students to speak up about anything that happens that they feel uncomfortable about. Weather it’s something a student , me or another mentor does or says.

Before I became a mentor I was on a SC team for the most part I had a wonderful experience with FIRST and my team as a whole. My first year as a student I was bullied by a couple of other students. I also became the safety captain so I did end up being the but of a lot of jokes and got called a lot of things like “Safety Nazi.” I also was never really taken seriously either and anything I wanted to add to the team never stuck or was struck down. It ended up really hurting my self esteem and I became depressed. Later I was labelled as a “Drama Queen” after I had a panic attack.
One of the Mentors outwardly excluded me from a lot of stuff and took over a lot of the projects that I liked doing. My mom joined as a Mentor as well but that didn’t help with anything. She liked to perpetuate the whole drama queen stuff.

Later on during my senior year, another Mentor who was my friends older brother started tutoring me, He was 24 at the time and I was 16, we ended up becoming friends and later on started dating as soon as I graduated. After a few years I realized that I was groomed. When I found out I broke up with him but almost ended up marrying him. He and his sister (who was also on the team) started to spread a lot of stuff.
They both did get kicked off the team later on but only because they tried to say things about my mom who was still mentoring.

A lot has happened since then, I got diagnosed as Autistic and am no longer depressed. I am now mentoring a team that I feel valued in. However when my old team found out that I was now with a “competitor team” at an off season competition some people on my old team started to call me a “traitor” any time they saw me, but if I tried to start a conversation they would hold up a hand to my face. I talked with the head mentor for that team later on and those issues have been resolved.

I am glad that my issues ended up getting resolved but it doesn’t for everyone. I am honestly not mad at my old team for the way I was treated, I’m 100% a forgive and forget type of person. I am upset at the people who bullied me at the competition only because they did it so out in the open that my students noticed. They ended up getting dragged into it and they shouldn’t have.

My main advice is to speak up if you see any injustices, if nothing gets done go to someone else until something gets resolved. I am all for a safe space and I think as a community we need to have one. It will be a culture change but with as many amazing and smart young people we have I think we can make it happen together.

[jaunvie]

@Alex_Y

Every FRC student is a freshman at some point, they shouldn’t be hated or treated unfairly because of it.

I guess this triggers a bad experience I once had.

I joined my son’s team as a mentor to make sure he would interact with the other students. (He had a bad habit of completing jobs all by himself and part of the goal, as a parent, was to give him the “team” experience)

Early on at a local “mentor get together” with local teams, there were 3 of us chatting when one mentor says to the other “oh you’ll love this.” Then turns to me and says “Why don’t you tell him your views about freshman working on the robot.”

Confused I said “I believe every student has a right to contribute what they think, and if a freshman’s idea is good why wouldn’t you use it?”

The first mentor chuckled and the second mentor said “No way. The only thing a freshman is good for is sorting nuts and Bolts.” Then proceeded to talk about how students had to “pay their dues” and how upset the upperclassmen would be if the underclassmen were allowed to do things like that.

I was dumbfounded. He had been a mentor for MANY years and was well respected by everyone there, and I only joined a few months before so I figured I was missing something that I just didn’t understand. So for the first year I really didn’t say anything and just observed how FIRST works. I didn’t see anything that would change my mind so I started advocating for the freshman. (And still do) And I’m proud to say our team works hard to ensure everyone is heard, and everyone has a chance to contribute.

It’s unfortunate that that kind of team culture develops. And it can take years to get rid of. While our team wasn’t as bad, I could see there was still a feeling that underclassmen had to “pay their dues” as well. And we started losing team members because of it. I spent years reminding students “Remember what it was like when you were a freshman? Don’t you want the team to be better than that?”

Turns out, that’s a pretty good line. Even when the team is doing well. Everyone feels frustrated as a freshman and feels the team needs to change in some way. The good news is, as long as you don’t repeat the same mistakes as the people ahead of you when you are “in power”, you can change the team culture into something much better. *

*That is, of course given that mentors are willing to adapt as well. Unfortunately often inflexible mentors can really stunt the cultural growth of a team. For many teams that have “parent mentors”, however, there is a somewhat natural turnover of mentors as students graduate. So that can sometimes help. But for some teams it can feel like an uphill battle. And that truly makes me sad.

[AwesomePossum]

I suspect this is a common problem, we experienced something similar. I joined our team as a mentor (with my freshman son) in the 2019-2020 season, and it didn’t take long for us to both realize the freshmen were getting frustratingly little involvement with the robot - they were mostly being used as bolt sorters and field element grunt labor. Part of the problem was that our workspace was EXTREMELY small at the time (700 square feet), and build sessions were by invitation only. We finally had to institute a rule that all sessions had to include a minimum of 1/3 freshmen or the session wouldn’t happen, and that mentors expected to see freshmen with their hands on the robot, even if only holding a wrench or clipping a zip tie. Student leadership whined and cried about it, declared us to be the worst mentors ever (our president from that year will still barely speak to me when she comes to visit…but she also gushes about how those then-freshmen have developed into seriously capable seniors, I wonder if she’s connected the dots yet?) and so on.

The best thing? Those students seem to have taken their experience to heart, and from what I can see are doing a good job of including freshmen and getting them up to speed. We are a WAY better team today than we were just a few years ago. Cultures CAN improve.

[Omuzder]

I can’t believe you had to go through that. It sounds like a horrible time and I’m proud of you for doing your best in that adversity.

It sounds like your team was lucky to have you. I hope your future involvement in FIRST is not hindered by these difficult situations you were put in.

[ChanceT]

It hasn’t so far. I’m still here for this year, and I’m not going to sit back and take it this year.