Student participation in a private team and a school robotics club

VEX V5 Technical Support
1

Hi, I have a question regarding participation in V5RC teams and school robotics clubs.

If a student is officially registered and competes as a core member of one private V5RC team, are they still allowed to help their school’s robotics club in a non-competitive role?

For example, the student would not be:

  • a registered member of another competition team

  • a driver

  • a primary builder/coder

  • involved in the notebook or judged interview process

The student would only help with general mentoring, teaching basic skills, troubleshooting, or assisting during club meetings.

Would this be considered acceptable under the current V5RC rules and student-centered policies?

Thanks!

2

Club membership and roles are at discretion of the school, as membership of club is determined at the school, not by Game Manual, or participation policies.

G5 discusses roles on team, G2 discusses Student-Centered Policy

G3 Common sense here would indicate you talk to the Robotics School Advisor.

G1 Integrity matters - dual-allegiance is extremely problematic, why go to join private team when your school has active competition teams in same program.

3

This is pretty grey area actually.
What you have just described sounds more like getting this particular student to play the role of a mentor/instructor/trainer.

But what stood out to me are - “troubleshooting, or assisting”.
As the exact nature (and amount) of troubleshooting and assistance is not clearly define, some might see it as the school team not having a robot that is reflective of the level or standard of the official team members.

FYI - This year onwards, I have issued out a club’s rule that no members are allowed to join another outside-school vex team, even at an ad-hoc basis.

4

Your organization is top shelf in terms of quality and performance, as well as, sharing so much to teams around the globe. I think this is the point I tried to communicate - why would you want to join a private team instead of supporting your own school whole heartedly?

5

Dual-allegiance is far from simple question. You don’t need allegiance to the new team to be their teacher or show them how to safely cut aluminum.

Imagine being long-time member of a very strong private team. Passionate about the program, preaching about it to everyone you see, including your class mates. Your class mates get inspired, form a club, convince the school, which never had a robotics program before, to sponsor a team, forming one. Should you refuse to run an onboarding session for those inspired students to show them all the helpful resources? Should you refuse to help the school admin navigating their new role of registering the team, collecting consent forms, looking up tournaments, ordering kits and parts?

Or do you have to abandon your established team where you can still learn so much to fully focus on running this new team?

This is not an industry where you’d be leaking trade secrets to your competition. This is an opportunity for everyone to grow - new team to learn robotics, the existing student to practice mentorship.

6

as long as the school students do the actual work and the robots remain distinct, a private team member acts as a legal “peer mentor” by teaching and advising the club

7

I would look more at the non-compete aspect, in particular the conflict in which being “helpful” becomes a recruiting tool for the private entity.

Each school will have its own framework based on the school’s core values and mission, and @meng clearly sees the need:

8

If this person is the president of the school’s robotics club, but she is representing a private team from another state in a competition, is that acceptable?

9

There ARE legitimate reason why this situation will exist (such as school district policies for teams engaging in out-of-state travel). The game manual does clearly address everything from the VEX competition level on what the students can and cannot do.

First, G4 and G5 apply the same whether the two teams are in the same org or not. For example, a senior member of a private org can mentor a freshman member of the school team in general ways - teaching them how to write PID, sharing build techniques for reducing robot weight, walking them through general troubleshooting processes - but they cannot share specific robot mechanism designs, copy/paste code, or provide direct answers to “why” something on a build didn’t work.

To note, this are exactly the same rules for two teams in the same organization. Two teams can share ideas, but cannot co-design or co-build their robots.

A few things not addressed in the rules (but that would fit under the G3 Common Sense rule), are…

First, I would advise that students from the private org should avoid being in an official leadership position in the student club - such as a club President or Treasurer office, for example. This could easily create a perceived conflict of interest.

Second, be VERY careful on ownership of parts. The private teams should not be building their robots in the club space. Nothing wrong bringing their bots to club days to do scrimmages, but having a clear separation of materials is very important. Nothing will create problems in a relationship faster than money. Even the insinuation that a private org is benefitting from the resources of a school club will create… issues.

Finally, the students (and coaches) in the private org should always act in a way that is positive towards the school. This is just an aspect of G1, but definitely worth calling out.

This is all shared from experience. I coach two private teams (private so that they can compete in out-of-state Signature Events - this was our superintendent’s idea). The students on these teams all are still associated with their school club, and all of the above items are my expectations for the two teams. It has been a very healthy relationship, giving the two teams opportunities they wouldn’t have had, and not doing so at the expense of the school team. (Fully self-funded does cause a pain in the wallet, but that’s been our only real downside.)