I’m going to be honest here - I’ve heard a lot about 448X in the community, and as it stands for me, they don’t have the greatest reputation. It’s true that they probably have an amazing robot, and amazing team, but they often display a condescending and unwelcoming attitude, at least when I’ve seen their interactions. Obviously, everybody has a reason for doing everything they do, but sometimes I’m left wondering why members of your team respond the way they do.
Yes, part of this probably comes from you guys not going to worlds (whether you intended or not), but I think that in order for the community to get behind you guys, you need to make a much more compelling argument. I’m sure that the RECF has their reasons for banning, however, without us as the community knowing the whole, complete, unaltered truth from multiple perspectives, it’s always going to be difficult for us to get on your side. What allegations were made against you, when, how did they change? You should have logs of e-mails, recordings of calls, and at least some recollection of any in-person meetings. What was the RECF trying to get your school to do? They are always going to be trying to encourage education and development, why would they needlessly encourage your school to punish you? Do you really think that the value your team brings to the table is significant enough for the RECF to take time to deal with? Unless the violations were severe, RECF could care less if a salty group of students decided to quit vex, irregardless of the reason (banning, bo1, or whatever else). At the end of the day, they’re probably just trying to help, but without you telling us why, it just sounds like you’re a group of children who want somebody to blame. The lack of your team in the investigation process? Well - that’s normal. When you are suspected of cheating at school, you’re allowed to give a statement, your teacher can give a statement, but then the board makes their own investigation. Take a look at the IBO’s policy on this: https://www.aischool.net/pdfs/IBDP/Policies/Academic_Honesty_Policy.pdf.
I know that you’re only describing a fraction of your issues, but if you’re going to go this in depth, take the time to gather all the resources that you need and have before trying to present a case. You wouldn’t want to go into a fight without checking if you loaded a bullet into your gun, right now you’re saying that you have bullets, but, you could be bluffing for all we know (sorry I watched mad max we’re going to move on from gruesome movie times). Your last argument holds some value, yes, RECF is the judge, jury, and executioner, and it has to try it’s best to remain fair and equal, however, you go out on a limb when you say that the RECF abuses it’s power - you can go to another competition, you can try to go to another competition, why should you stay with vex? This is the way they want to run a competition, the same way one teacher might run one class stricter than another. They obviously want to punish those who push the boundaries - when was it ever a good idea to start pushing the law? Yes, they do benefit the general populus of students, but they don’t have to punish those who love and care about the competition. I don’t think that they’re trying to, but I think that it’s happening because of the way their roadmap happens to work out. There’s going to be upset people whichever way you swing (after all, only majority is needed to win a vote), and sometimes you might be on the wrong side of the fence, and you’ll just have to suck it up and move on. Sometimes refs make bad calls, sometimes somebody slips, and it all happens. If you want to affect change, trying to push for a petition on an online forum isn’t necessarily the best way to do it. We as a community are here to help you, so perhaps telling us who you’ve talked to, who your mentors have talked to, and how the relationships have panned out will benefit all of us.
I’ve noticed that this entire post has been changing a bit as I was writing it, that’s ok, I’ve attached a screenshot of how I viewed it - at the time it was titled “corruption in the RECF”.
