Recently, two incidents of ungracious behavior in the Vex community have come to my attention – the deliberate voting down of contest entries in the Vex Design Challenge, and questionable (no, actually, unquestionably bad) behavior at a tournament reported to me by a friend. While 2 incidents are not necessarily a pattern, I’m concerned, in part, because of the blatant nature of the incidents. I have been involved in robotics competitions for 6 years in 4 different programs, and have been mostly pleased at the general good level of behavior. While I have witnessed the occasional short temper (including my own) at a match gone wrong or disrespectful challenging of a judge’s decision, until now, I have never known of a team intentionally harming another’s efforts in order to promote their own.
It makes me wonder whether an explicit call to gracious professionalism is in order. For those of you unfamiliar with GP, it is the core value promoted by Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST (one of the major robotics organizations). It used to be called “good sportsmanship” or even “right and wrong” in the old, less PC days. Although Vex is an independent organization, a fair number of its participants have some experience with FIRST and carry the GP mantle; in addition, some who have joined the Vex community were already “good sports” without FIRST. But if you have ever wondered why competing teams at robotics events tend to be nicer than those at many sporting events, chances are that GP is at work to some degree, whether directly or indirectly.
When gracious professionalism is explicitly discussed, students tend to go, “Yeah, yeah, we know all that already.” But when push comes to shove, and someone is tempted to do something questionable (i.e., wrong), someone will often chime in, “Hey, that’s not GP,” preventing their teammate from going over the line. While I would like to think that we are all nice people, I know that I am often tempted, as a mentor, to cut corners and do “too much,” either out of expedience or self-interest. I, like many others, can use all the nudges in the right direction I can get.
Whether we call it “gracious professionalism” or something else is not important. However, I believe that explicitly stating the obvious can be a good thing. It gives people a tangible reminder that what we learn (including character) is more important than what we win, and it tends to reduce, though not eliminate, the incidence of bad behavior.
Through its awards, Vex has made it clear that points and field performance are not the only things that matter in this competition. I’m wondering whether there is anything that we, the Vex community can do to preserve the culture of excellence and character that we have enjoyed thus far.
I have a deep, dark, confession to make: I don’t really like robots very much (perish the thought). What I love is watching how robots transform students to levels of learning, teamwork, and maturity that I never had imagined. The day that robotics becomes like Little League is the day I hand in my resignation.
Yolande
