Robotics Education & Competition Foundation
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Official Q&A: VRC 2023-2024: Over Under

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1939: <G4> Clarification on support students during Signature Events


Clayton Ninas (Event Partner)
7-Feb-2024

<G4>

Signature events provide an experience that is close to a Championship event, but not all teams from an organization may get registered due to costs, etc. Team roles are defined in the Designer/Builder/Programmer style. G4 states at the beginning:

Each Team must include Drive Team Members, Programmer(s), Designer(s), and Builder(s). No Student may fulfill any of these roles for more than one VEX Robotics Competition Team in a given competition season.

G4.b states:

When a Team qualifies for a Championship event (e.g., States, Nationals, Worlds, etc.) the Students on the Team attending the Championship event are expected to be the same Students on the Team that was awarded the spot. Students can be added as support to the Team, but may not be added as Drive Team Members or Programmer for the Team.

There are a couple of questions I have regarding this, especially for Signature Events since it is more likely all teams from an organization may not register:

  1. In a scenario where only one team from an organization chooses to attend a signature event, would it be allowed for Students from another team within the same organization to attend and provide support roles, such as scouting, talking to other teams, and standing in skills lines? These support roles would not fulfill Team/Drive Team/Notebook/Judge Interview functions.
  2. If (1) is permissible, would these support students be allowed to assist in the pit if there was an issue that requires fixing? I am going to assume that no support student would be programming or a Drive Member.
  3. Would these support students continue to be allowed to participate with their original team in a G4 defined role as the season continues?

My interpretation is that because students are strictly support, and not fulfilling any Team or Drive Team roles as defined by G4, (1) and (3) would be fine because there are no rules specifically against this. Students may provide support roles for more than one team. (2) is more of a gray area to me if they act as additional pit crew to fix parts of a robot between matches since I am not sure that would be considered Building for another team.

G4  
Answered by committee
28-Feb-2024
  1. In a scenario where only one team from an organization chooses to attend a signature event, would it be allowed for Students from another team within the same organization to attend and provide support roles, such as scouting, talking to other teams, and standing in skills lines? These support roles would not fulfill Team/Drive Team/Notebook/Judge Interview functions.

Yes, this would be allowed.

  1. If (1) is permissible, would these support students be allowed to assist in the pit if there was an issue that requires fixing? I am going to assume that no support student would be programming or a Drive Member.

No. These additional support Students may not be Robot Builders. This would extend to Robot repairs.

  1. Would these support students continue to be allowed to participate with their original team in a G4 defined role as the season continues?

Yes, provided their participation was limited to support roles.