This is true; sports (including VEX) can teach many valuable life lessons. Learning to stand up for oneself can be included in those, along with knowing when to shut up.
…or you can respectfully make your case to the ref, and, if he/she upholds the incorrect call, try to come up with solutions to better enable refs to make the right call. This is engineering; you find a problem, come up with a solution, and implement it. You try to make things better. Throughout history if marginalized groups in society had just said “Well, I guess being treated like a sub-human is how life works, so lets just suck it up and move on with a fake smile”, then things would have never gotten better. It took individuals and groups pushing for change, for equality, for solutions. Obviously, this particular issue pales in comparison to that of civil rights, but it is the mindset I have particular issue with, not the particular application.
I’m sorry, but I find this sentiment disturbing. I’m not “perfectly okay” seeing an injustice (however minor) occur. If it is within my power to fix or otherwise do something about, I would do so.
Maybe there’s a disconnect here, but aren’t the teams (and the students that are part of them) the entire point of the tournament? Yes they are indeed only one part, but they are the part around all other parts revolve. This is not to say that all the other parts (EPs, refs, other volunteers) must bend to the will of the students, but rather, what EP, ref, judge, queuer, or inspector would volunteer their time if the students were not present? On the other hand, students would still build some robots (albeit to a much lesser extent) in the absence of the other parts of a competition. I don’t mean to come off as an entitled brat (please gosh no), but multiple EPs on the forum here seem to have missed the fact that many of the teams have spent just as much time or more working throughout the year, with much sacrifice of their own.
Considering the hundreds of hours of time devoted by both sides, neither should be put out in the cold for the other’s benefit.
This is a strawman. No one is asking for this kind of ridiculous action. Rather, what has been proposed here (by several users, not just by the OP) is much more achievable by many events. It may not be possible for all right now, but it is a step in the right direction. Personally I think a step in the right direction is better than acceptance of the flawed status quo.
Is this supposed to balance things out? Why would I be happy knowing that I “won” because another team was treated unfairly? The stupid trophy itself is worth nothing to me if I didn’t earn it. If something like that happened to an opponent of mine, then I would still be very much in favor of some solution to the problem. In fact, this has happened to an opponent of mine, and it is very possible that such a video system would have overturned the call and I would be able to rest easier knowing that justice was done, regardless of whether I actually won or lost.
One more thing:
Please understand that many (not all) of these bad calls happen in matches that are far from close, or a robot was illegally tipped. In these cases the teams have done all that was in their power, yet the ref overturned all of it.
Aside from that, private universal casting of blame upon oneself is not a healthy thing to do, and is not a good “life lesson”. Sometimes other people make mistakes, and there may truly be nothing that you could have done to change what happened; so do what you can to improve and learn for the next time, and don’t blame yourself for what you can’t do. That is the life lesson here.