I think there is a point that is acceptable. For example, I see no problem saving a few seats in the 400s at Einstein for the people in the pit packing the crate. However, some teams do go too far.
The seats sectioned off at Championship for teams that were on the field were great for watching matches. Not all venues do that or have the ability to do that. The issues we encountered were higher in the stands as well as at district events. Your team sounds like a lot of fun. I would rather see a team having that kind of enthusiasm than a team with its members sleeping in the stands or playing games. Keep up the good work. The bottom line is everyone is there for the same reason. We all want to see matches. Considering those around you is part of gracious professionalism
Regional and district events wonât change, there is too much variability in seating, from individual seats to bleachers. However at CMP they should assign seating. At NOAC, which is a large event in the Boy Scouts Order of the Arrow, we were all given a name badge like at CMP, and on the bottom it had each of the 4 shows, and an assigned seat, they didnât strictly enforce it, but each group was sitting in the same area, once you got there you could move around within your group. There were 4 shows, so two shows you had lower bowl seats, and 2 shows you had upper bowl seats. Then you could have sections book off for visitors and VIPs assorted around the dome, by every field. This way there would be no argument about âsaving seatsâ. And then you could assign a block of scouting seats, and you would have to specify your number of seats you need-max 8 for scouting.
Just my 2 cents
I understand man. At champs this year during quals a friend and I went to watch matches on another field during Hopper lunch. We found good seats that had a reasonable view of the field. Before having the opportunity to sit a lady stuck out her leg blocking our path and informed us that she had most of the seats in the row saved for her team for when they returned. We didnât mind since we were taking a small lunch break and there were only two of us. At the time I knew about the rule but didnât feel the need to start a confrontation.
We moved over and sat in a section to the left. A few team leaders of another team shot us looks everyone once in a while for the less than 10 minutes it took to eat our lunch and see 2 field resets and only 1 match. The next day we decided to go up to the 400âs level to eat our lunch. I feel that we shouldnât have had to worry about finding seats for a few minutes to eat lunch. Teams shouldnât be able to save seats for an entire day unless they are physically sitting in them. If no one is sitting in them for a long period of time I feel like other people should be allowed to sit in them. Not to say that you shouldnât be able to leave and come back to your seats, but that leads right back to the saving seats rule. I appreciate the team that didnât throw us out or attempt to throw us out of their section. We returned the favor by leaving promptly after finishing our lunch.
So we have a simple rule that isnât enforced. I appreciate Sperkowskyâs ingenuity of thinking up a new plan, but I donât think a more complicated rule will do any better.
I encourage you to call-out the offender. They have people reading CD. It will get back to them and they wonât do it next time.
Iâve volunteered âcrowd controlâ at the Greater KC regional where we normally donât have enough seats and itâs routine for the announcer to occasionally remind of the âno saving seatsâ policy.
Not sure the answer to this because something obviously needs to be done. Last year I think it was that we had 2 mentors get up to use the restroom. They left their stuff (laptops, cameras, jackets, etc) in their seats. We had parents from another team shove their stuff aside and sit in those seats. When we explained they yelled at us about not saving seats and continued when we asked them if we could retrieve the belongings.
It goes both ways is my point. Maybe we have to go to assigned areas for each team. Seems a bit much but the current system isnât working. I do know Einstein could be a TON better if it was held on the wide side of the field instead of the smaller curved side.
A fundamental issue with this topic is brought up in the first story that gives us context:
The OP wanted to save a seat.
Ignore any perceived contradiction, perceived double standards or perceived hypocrisy. This situation brings up the point that people want to sit together, and should be allowed to sit together.
How many saved seats it too many? 1 seat? 12 seats? 48 seats for the 54-person team?
The thing is. The team whom I had a specific issue with was actually a very well respected team. Probably had one of the top 10 robots in the world this year. The other thing is that is was an issue mostly between a few parents and a single team member. I do plan on contacting a mentor on the team though.
Additionally - if an empty seat is âfair gameâ at any point in time, it becomes a real powder keg of a situation anytime someone gets up to use the restroom, eat, check the robot etc.
If you enforce the letter of the rule to its most literal interpretation, anytime someone gets up (for whatever reason), a pack of people can be waiting, claim a seat and quote the rule. Iâm not saying people and teams donât take advantage of this, but at the same time Iâm failing to see how many of the proposed solutions aside from straight up assigned seats will address the issue. I also canât quite wrap my head around how assigned seats would work with the variability in team size and how that too wouldnât lead to chunks of empty seats in premium locations that people would subsequently want to sit inâŚ
-Brando
It is simple really yet people seem to still insist on acting foolish.
We had our entire team trying to find a few seats together and the newer students who did not know any better were respecting the wishes of other teams that wanted to save seats even though they are not allowed to do so. After I watched my team finally end up in the 400 section and people were still trying to save seats up there I had them all sit down wherever there was space because at that point we were in the nosebleeds and it was getting ridiculous for Einstein.
There were mentors from other teams and parents yelling about us sitting in 30 empty seats but lets face itâŚthe short side of the stadium is not large enough for this behavior. Even if you need to sit in the middle of a team saving seats, do it and explain to them that they are simply not allowed to save sections, the stadium is too small on the short side for all these teams to fit, and that being aggressive and confrontational can cost their team awards as well as the respect of the FRC community.
OP I am sorry you had that experience but one person defying a crowd never ends well. I hope you contact their mentor and have a discussion about the event since everyone is wearing a convenient name tag. You were in the right but unfortunately people are tired, short tempered, and not their best at the end of a long week.
Once most of the teams are out of the running they seem to devolve into tired and angry people that throw GP out of the window once they have nothing to lose. This is a culture that should change.
The biggest issue here isnât team vs team seat saving (first come first serve, we all know that you *probably *shouldnât jump into the middle of a large team section just because someone left to use the restroom). Itâs when a team blocks members of the general public from coming in to see whatâs going on. Whether an âun-taggedâ exec from a large company looking to âsee what itâs all aboutâ, parents or relatives showing up on Saturday to check out the action or an unsuspecting passer-by that just happened onto one of our tournaments, we need to show these people what FIRST is all about!
Welcome people into our crowd, donât show them how petty we can be about who is going to sit where to watch a match. If you leave your seat(s) unattended, donât expect them to be there when you get back, especially when people unbound by the general rules show up and need a spot to park on Saturday!
Maybe there should be saving of a reasonable number of seats. There seem to be legitimate needs for minimum seating (scouting). Maybe each team gets to claim X number of seats using lanyards or labels or some such, but only in contiguous sections. Or something.
Iâve always interpreted the no-seat-saving rule as going both ways. No, youâre not allowed to reserve seats for your team. Yes, that means Iâm allowed to pop right in and sit in the middle of your âsavedâ block, and thereâs nothing you can do to stop me. But no, I wonât do that unless I absolutely have to. I will be respectful of your desire to âsaveâ a block of seats for your team scouts or parents, within reason, and when possible, if you are respectful of my need to take one of âyourâ seats if nothing else is available.
I would hope that every team would abide by this unwritten rule and agree with it, but clearly thatâs not happening.
My own story: I was lucky to be able to attend Worlds last year and I too, along with a few of my freshman students, was pushed away from a set of legitimately empty (as-yet-untaken) seats by an overenthusiastic mentor/parent from another team desiring to claim them for their team. Like, almost literally pushed, this mentor/parent shoved their way through. I made some comment to my team members like âLetâs go find somewhere else guys, OUR team is graciously professionalâ. My kids called me out on being passive aggressive but what can you do.
Let me start out by saying I donât have the total answer to this, but it is something that FIRST needs to address. Over the years I have seen numerous terrible things happen as a result of trying to save seats including but not limited to : making kids cry, making adults argue, making adults cry, strategies involved in blocking access to exits and entrances, injuries from running, inadvertent tripping, etc. All just to try and get better seats.
Here are some sacrificial (beat them up all you want) ideas on things that could be done to help.
- Control which doors will be open at what times and make an easy system of a zig zag line like amusement parks for entry through a single entry.
- Tickets/assigned seats - teams put in the number of seats that each team needs and then a lottery happens to assign blocks of tickets. If teams want to swap tickets later so be it.
- Auction or raffle the best seats for charity - big team that wants good seats let them pay for them.
- Dedicated areas for x number of students per team (scouts) in the best section.
- Sections for active playing teams only (they do this at championship and it could be done at regional events also)
- Have sections dedicated to teams that want to win the spirit award and those who donât
I think generally this issue stems from the fact that teams take FRC events at different levels of seriousness. For some getting prime seats is about having the best spots for scouts which means better data and better event results. For others they just want good seats to see their robot play on the field. Both of these are fine, but they create situations where people act inappropriately, which in my opinion sets the tone of the event and defines the experience of many teams. (nobody wants to start their event by getting yelled at by the local power house team who feels like you are in the way).
I donât have a solution for this but how many years are we going to let peopleâs experiences at event be influenced by something small and crappy like saving seats before it changes.
Thereâs also the case which I heard was the ugliest this year, and that was getting seats for opening and closing ceremonies. These were cases where the teams who were involved were not on the playing field or stage, yet there were people defending their seats like a herd of hyenas defending a watering hole.
Weâll start another thread for this, but weâre developing a series of PSAâs which we hope will be used to humorously educate attendees at FIRST events about this issue, as well as others.
As others have mentioned in this thread, the vast majority of people are reasonable. Communication is key. There are some attendees that are hellbent and it simply isnât worth the effort, but these are the rare exception. I think ignorance of the rule is far more common than people maliciously âoffendingâ.
I know our team typically has 10-15 guests (family friends, parents, school board officials etc.) that may be at their first FIRST event. In a perfect world, we have time to explain the etiquette, but it doesnât always work that way.
Another option, tangential to this issue: give guests special colored lanyards and instruct ALL teams to treat these people as VIPs. (Maybe they do this already, I donât know.)
Even when all teams are at their best behaviour theyâre going to walk into a stadium full of banners, loud cheering, colored T-shirts everywhere and theyâre just not going to know where is it âokâ to sit. To have team members welcome them into the fold, invite them to sit down and explain whatâs going on would be the ideal scenario, as some of you already do.
Who is going to carry the sentiments (quality and quantity) expressed here to the correct ears within FIRST?
Does anyone already connected to the correct lines of communication want to volunteer to do it?
Blake
Although I agree that the saving of seats is a **huge **problem, we had to arrive at MSC over 1.5 hours early to get alright seats, we need to look at the situation from the seat savers perspective as well. The adult mentors are responsible for the students at these events. This is a difficult job made almost impossible if we have students spread out over an entire stadium. We have a rather small team compared to many. I canât imagine the issues that huge teams have with keeping track of all the students.
With that said their are several âregularsâ who aggressively save seats. These teams are typically large,+30 students.They know who they are because they come prepared with things like team colored blankets to cover rows of seats. This is unacceptable and puts others in a bad situation. Walking into that section and asking them to remove their blanket is very likely to lead to a confrontation. Iâm not sure how to deal with this.
If someone was being paid to run these events it would clearly be their job to take care of it but it is extremely unfair to ask a volunteer who is already giving so much to go get in an argument with people who should know better. I guess it falls to all of us to protect GP even if it is uncomfortable.
One route would be to fill out the survey, and put comments about the seating in there.
This is the classic tragedy of the commons problem - we have a scarce resource over which we compete but there is no means of allocating that scarce resource amongst ourselves. That leads to conflict that is not easily resolved.
The reasons why seats are saved are generally rationale and important:
- Adult mentors must be able to monitor the minor students in their charge.
- Scouts, who are participants in the action on the field and in the metacompetition in the tournament, need good views of the field and to be in close proximity to each other run scouting systems.
- Teammates and supporters prefer fellow companionship.
The current rule doesnât recognize any of those imperative needs. In fact, I have not seen a clear rationale for the existing rule.
The solution is the one used in so many similar situations beforeâcreate a seat allocation process that meets these imperatives. I suggest allocating two blocks to each team, one for scouts (and that will vary by teamâwe need 12), and another for other team members. The first block should be set up in an area with a good view of the field (not in the bottom rows based on watching how other teams set up). Teams might be willing to trade block locations for certain considerations (e.g., first pick of the first alliance 
) The second is much more discretionary.
BTW, I also like the idea of the VIP lanyards. We really do need to be mindful of who we are interacting withâitâs a reality of gaining funding for FRC.