So… By some miracle, the CEO saw my email and replied to me! I’m feeling a lot better about the company considering they have actually acknowledged my concerns. Two things of note they let me know:
I also got an email as well, however it is not for me to share.
While I appreciate the time and email, I (and others) feel that this is a message FIRST should be getting out publicly themselves, not whispering privately via emails.
I’ve had multiple responses on unrelated topics from HQ and explicitly asked permission to share. That permission has been granted every time.
Obviously I’d also like to see a public statement, but an HQ employee would be hard pressed to say no to such an inquiry, especially because you could (read: could but should not) post it without their permission.
It’s not about permission, or even me wanting to share this information more broadly – but simply put - they should be the ones to do it.
It’s not like they don’t have the means, so why are they not?
This is how a student put it to me:
They can make pins, and pronoun labels, and show off relationships with pro-LGBTQ+ people and organizations but when it comes to directly dealing with an issue, they go all “Don’t ask, Don’t tell”. By attempting to pacify privately, they avoid taking any real public stance, and it makes them just as complicit as the TX Gov.
Now that last bit… is a bit harsh IMHO, but the point is valid.
Honestly, as a cis white middle-aged male this is decidedly not my fight, but I’m not going to sit idly by either.
Keep in mind, that having a contract with Houston does not mean anyone will force FIRST to host the Championship there. Contracts can be broken, canceled, or changed. Instead, FIRST is unwilling to incur the burden, whether that be just human effort or financial, to address this issue. Simply allowing the status quo to occur is still a choice.
While this is true, I seem to recall that it took FIRST more than a year to find new hosts when the contract with St. Louis was coming to a close at the end of the 2016 season (I seem to recall that they had announced the plans to find 2 host cities for 2017 and beyond as early as 2015).
So, if FIRST were to chose not to hold Champs in Houston next year, it would likely mean no Champs at all.
While I have not looked in their bylaws, I suspect that choosing not to have champs at all would likely be against their own rules. Even if it is not a “rule” that they have to provide a Championship event, I suspect that if any of us were in the room where the decisions were being made and we were faced with continuing to hold an event in Houston next year versus not holding an event at all, we would chose to hold the event.
I’ll take a possible stab at answering: Money and influence. FIRST, the districts, and the regional planning committees all rely on outside money. Donations from corporations as well as grants from various levels of government. Support by politicians can help make that stuff easier to get (how do you think MN got a state grant to buy practice fields? Many years of effort getting local politicians interested enough to support us!). Wade into a partisan political fight and you know you’ll immediately alienate half the politicians. Once you’ve done that, you can kiss goodbye any potential future funding.
I’m not saying it isn’t worth it, especially for certain topics, but I’m sure that consideration has to come into play for a non-profit organization like FIRST.
Let me take a stab at this - with the caveat that I’ve spent all of 5 minutes or less on it.
And boom. existing contracts? check. Safe? check. Inclusive? Check. Does it make a stand, nope. Politically neutral? yep.
But at least it says something.
This. Is. Not. Hard.
FIRST could have more flexibility to find a new CMP location if they shouldered the burden to find a solution. Finding another venue that is the size of the GRB on that week of the year is probably impossible. But, you could find maybe two or three smaller venues that could each host one part of the FIRST Championship (i.e. break up FRC/FTC/FLL). You could also host two champs, but each champ is smaller and would fit in more venues. FIRST could have also chosen some method of putting the one big CMP in Detroit (why they did not do this, I have no specific information, but I presume Detroit cost > Houston cost).
Also, there’s nothing saying CMP has to be week 8 or 9. No bags and no requirement to ship the robot to the venue means the championship could be in May or in the summer. Multiply all these options together, and the likelihood of finding a solution should increase dramatically.
If we presume this supposition is true (which I doubt it is otherwise FIRST would have been in violation of it for the last two years) this is yet another choice that FIRST has made. Bylaws can be changed, ignored, or bent. Even the highest law of the land in the United States has been changed 27 times.
FIRST has options, they are simply options that were either not considered, or were weighted against some other factor like cost or the current logistical capability of FIRST as a business. At the end of the day though, nothing is forcing FIRST’s hand except for FIRST, and putting on a non-Texas CMP is not impossible. In a world where justice exists, nothing is impossible.
While I generally agree with what you’re trying to say, there are a fairly large number of constraints to consider with dates. Some schools are done by June. AP exams are early May. Etc.
The consequences of pushing Champs later and later get more and more problematic…
Something I have wondered about is if FIRST could find a way to have an official testing site on-location at the Championship. I’m not sure many students would do too well if they’re just thinking about all the cool stuff they get to do in 2 hours, though. 
I agree 100%, and I said as such when I replied to FIRST, but I will say, it made me feel better about the organization as a whole considering the email I sent was read by the CEO and actually responded to. ( Full disclosure, I emailed them from my captain email address which may have been a factor in them taking me seriously lol)
There would have to be buy in from all the various school districts every year. I hear about enough in-fighting within school districts that I am not optimistic about this working. Venues such as GRB often have spaces that can be used for this purpose but would most likely charge for their use.
There is no chance FIRST will take this on. Finding a location finding proctors… No way. Wouldn’t stop another organization from doing it. But I still think it’s a bad idea.
I like this idea. Let’s try that.
Maybe cost. But I would guess, uncertainty about lingering pandemic issues and Detroit shutting down at the last minute. FIRST feels comfortable that Texas will remain open.
Not much of an option for many teams I would guess. Students and mentors have other plans.
We have a hard enough time convincing parents to let their kids come to Champs two weeks before AP tests. We’ve had multiple parents elect not to allow their kids to attend before. I can’t even imagine the difficulty we’d have in convincing parents to allow their children to test in another state, let alone the logistics imposed on both the school districts and FIRST to accommodate this.
Not to mention, the stress, fatigue, and exhaustion experienced at competition might just be the very worst condition to test in.
Many of these venues book events 5-10 years in advance, and Spring is a particularly popular time for the type of conventions that use such venues. Plus the number of venues that can even come close to handling the scale of FIRST Champs is extremely limited. Not to mention the travel (airport access) and hotel requirements.
From what I’ve heard (unofficially) through the volunteer grapevine, FIRST likely just missed their opportunity to reserve COBO this season and it was unavailable during the week they were looking to schedule (if not this year, it is likely why there’s no Detroit Champs for at least the next few years). That said, the initial decision to not press Detroit sooner I suspect was likely because of the pandemic. Texas made a pretty strong “we’re open/no lockdown” stance early on, where as Michigan has been much more on-the-fence about the possible return of lockdowns/restrictions until very recently.
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