Hi all,
Many of you have probably met us at one point in time, though Leeanna officially left BCUZ in 2020. After Jenna officially quit just earlier today, we have decided to step up to publicly address the toxic dynamics we’ve both experienced in our time on the team in an effort to finally bring this situation (or it would be better to call it, these situations) to light.
For both of us, robotics has been a major aspect of our lives and identities-- we have both competed since high school to high acclaim, and were very much looking forward to continuing our careers during college. In fact, the team’s existence was a deciding point in our colleges of choice. Once we had actually started at Clemson, though, our experiences unfortunately fell short of our previously high expectations.
While strikingly similar, the incidents that had occurred between the two of us still somewhat differ; with this, for readability purposes, the below will be split according to our individual histories with BCUZ. These are also chronologically ordered, with Leeanna’s experiences spanning between 2018 and 2020, and Jenna’s between 2020 and 2023.
Leeanna:
Background and Origins
I graduated from high school in 2018 and joined BCUZ the year the team was founded (May 2018). I have been ever so grateful for my robotics experience and the relationships I have made hold a high value in my life. I was so excited to continue my robotics passion in college and even more excited to have a group of friends. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I was pushed from the team and the community by members of BCUZ. Despite expressing concerns to university officials and team officers, nothing was done.
To provide some context: while in highschool, I competed in FTC, FRC, and VRC. My highschool moved from FTC to VRC my senior year (In The Zone). I started competing in 2014 and I have competed well in all leagues but winning was not all to me. For me, the relationships built and the overall problem solving aspect of competing mattered much more. My VRC team did not compete until late February during the ITZ season, but we did well considering our late start. Overall, we gained respect quickly in the South Carolina community. I did not compete against any member of BCUZ in FTC, FRC, or VRC-- this introduced an immediate decision that I was lesser, being that I had never “proved myself”. My experiences with FIRST immediately left a bad impression on members of the team. They often degraded my awards and experiences. Early on in my competitive career on BCUZ, I was told, “Let me handle it. You’re better at FIRST. I am better at VEX’', despite my skills being directly transferable. This caught me off guard very early on, little did I know this interaction would foreshadow the next two and a half years of constant discouragement.
My negative experiences started very early on. I recall having been asked when I first started competing on the team what my parents do for a living; since the time I responded, I was labeled as “poor” or “charity” whenever money was involved in the conversation. I asked once if the President of BCUZ at the time really thought I was lesser and stupid, to which he responded “Yes, I absolutely do”. When I tried to express to a teammate that this comment upset me, I was told “Don’t ask things you don’t want the answer to”. Obviously, this comment took me back. How could not one, but two of my team members be that openly neglectful of my feelings? I share this to emphasize the environment was toxic from the start-- I was a target. My teammates constantly backed their derogatory statements up with one another to avoid becoming the targets themselves, but no one was safe. These comments happened constantly, I just happened to be the one to catch the heat most often.
Often when members were not present, other teammates would openly talk negatively about the missing member, with many of these topics involving how they were not respected as a member of the team or a competitor overall. I was constantly told my achievements were not my own, but rather ones I just took credit for. When I would build, things would instantly get taken apart and rebuilt (in the same way) because they “didn’t trust” me. There were constant sexist remarks about how women are bad drivers, women are biologically less intelligent, and should “stay in their place”. Early on, I was speaking with another teammate about co-ed versus all-female versus all-male team performance, and ended up being told that teams composed of all male members will always champion the rest. When I disagreed, I was told to “fact-check” myself and my opinion was invalidated.
Experiences During Turning Point
Exclusion and Corrosion
Some of my main roles on the team were strategy, social media, and building. I was asked to draw autonomous routes and skills routes; however, when I presented these routes, my teammates did not ever look at them. Instead, they would complain about how they had no ideas for routes and complain that I didn’t do anything. Very few of my efforts and contributions to the team were ever viewed. This further invalidated my qualities and what I stand for as a competitor. I felt discouraged and not valued, but I kept quiet and stayed in my place. I figured overall, the argument was not worth the fuss, and I was aware that in the end I would be outnumbered.Around early Fall 2018, I was involved in a car wreck due to no fault of my own. I had sustained a brain injury that barred me from drinking (at this time, I was also underage)-- even then, I was pressured to drink to bond with the team. Before the 2019 Worlds Championship, older members (current officers at that time, who were both of-age upperclassmen) pressured another (underaged) member and I to transport alcohol from South Carolina to Kentucky. I expressed concern, after which I was belittled. I was frequently called a “buzzkill” and a “stick in the mud”. I very much felt as if the team would respect me if I did agree to do as they ask, and because I did not I dealt with backlash. When other team members would mention alcohol, I was told to close my ears as if I was a child. This pushed me further away from the team and made me feel as if I was not allowed to have a voice. I was constantly picked on and called out for my sobriety while actively being underage and medically barred.
During Spring Break 2019, we met up with another team for a scrimmage. Although my teammates had allowed me to come along, I was later told that they “didn’t even know why I was there”. I was asked to not touch the robots, despite being a builder, and was told my presence was distracting, even at times where I remained quiet and distanced from the rest of BCUZ. I was confused by this and did not fully understand why they’d “allow” me to come but then in turn make my entire existence a problem.
At Turning Point Worlds, our robots’ controllers were left at our Airbnb and I offered to drive back to get them-- while leaving, my teammates sent me off by saying “don’t wreck the car”. In the months after my initial wreck (and onwards), I expressed how I did not appreciate those jokes, but continued to receive them nonetheless. When I returned from my errand, I was belittled for taking too long despite having to detour for a parade in an unknown city and still getting back before our first match. This further validated my feeling of constantly not being good enough no matter what I did.
Later during this event, I was scouting and obtained videos of the team we were facing from another team-- I was eager to show my teammates. When I approached my teammates with these videos, my teammates again refrained from viewing them in the same manner as when I presented them with the autonomous and skills routes. I was told specifically by another competitor to watch the autonomous line as the team had consistently (barely) crossed the line during autonomous that day. I tried to deliver this information to the team, but no one wanted to hear me out. We ended up losing the match and I mentioned what I was told about the autonomous line, to which my team replied that the loss was my fault because I did not share the information. Despite my best efforts to aid the team, no one would listen. Even as a drive coach, I was directed to stand behind the drivers and not speak, as I was told that I would trigger frustration if I spoke during a match.
For our competitions, I was the one in charge of packing our large rolling case as I was the only one that consistently made everything fit. Upon packing to leave TP Worlds, I was asked to leave the pit because my presence “annoyed” one of our team members. For this reason, while leaving, I was not able to check behind the rest of the team to make sure nothing was left. When we arrived back in Clemson, we discovered we were missing two field walls-- I was then told that maybe if I had packed, that wouldn’t have happened. I was astonished and actually laughed at being told this, but I quickly realized they were not joking. Throughout all of my time on the team, up to this point and onwards, the environment has been characterized by constant gaslighting with me being discouraged from even socializing with other competitors or my own teammates.
Tower Takeover
G1, Auburn, and Personal Reputation
During the beginning of the Tower Takeover season, one of our builders started involving people outside the program in our team’s design choices. I would be contacted by some of these individuals in regards to the robot I was supposed to be co-designing; they would ask about features already on the robot I did not know existed in the first place. The outside individuals had more input on the design of our robots than many members on BCUZ, including myself, had. Around this time was when roles in the server started to change as well-- specifically, I noticed the creation of hidden channels that only certain members were allowed to see. Ultimately, this appeared as a way to gatekeep information from incoming freshmen and any others they did not deem “trustworthy”. When I expressed it was unfair to leave these individuals out, I was told that I could be the one to work directly with them because the other veteran members didn’t want to “deal with them”. My teammates didn’t even give them a chance-- they deemed who they thought was worth working with very early on in the season. I tried my best to encourage and help out the freshmen members, but they quickly learned the culture and slowly stopped attending. Our freshman group went from upwards of thirty students at the initial interest meeting to just one by the time our first competition came around.
As preparation for the new game continued, I still dealt with more comments about my intelligence, my worth, and my socioeconomic status; by the start of 2020, the team had made no improvements. We attended the competition at Auburn University, where I drove separately from the team because they wanted to leave an hour before I was out of work; however, they ended up leaving after I was out anyway. I was intending to drive the next morning, but no one would respond as per what time I should arrive at Auburn (note that the trip from Clemson is a 4-hour drive). After some time, I received a response stating I would need to leave within four hours, and while on the way there I constantly received texts from other teammates asking where I was, when I was arriving, and whether I had brought the sticker labels for our notebook. I was obviously frustrated and I felt micromanaged. My arrival time would not change despite how many times I was asked.
When I arrived at Auburn, my team was not there, despite being told they were waiting for me. I was very upset and frustrated with the situation, I also had other teams coming up and asking me where my team was and I had no answers. The team ended up arriving an hour late with the notebook-- my team had to ask the EP to turn it in, after which my teammates claimed that I was to blame for their tardiness despite me only having the stickers for the cover and not the physical notebook. Soon afterwards, during inspection, our 15” robot was out of size. Instead of fixing the sizing or speaking calmly to the RECF representative/head referee, my teammates chose to yell at her, loudly stating that she was incompetent and didn’t know how to use a sizing tool. I quickly apologized for this to the RECF representative and I was embarrassed and appalled by the interaction. In fact, this incident almost caused my team to be disqualified due to violation of ; the only reason we could continue competing was because the host team asked that the representative give our team another chance.
Even after this, throughout the day my teammates continued to openly complain about how the competition was poorly run and “rigged”, despite the host team not winning nor submitting a notebook themselves. During matches I sat in the box and actively scored what was going on in the match. This was my way of still being an active drive team participant but allowed me to stay “out of the way”. I would actively score and do predictions to coach my team which color would be needed and if towers mattered that match. I would not speak directly to the drivers however, I had to go through a middle man. By the end of the event other teams also noticed BCUZ’s dynamics and behaviors, and expressed concerns to me about the yelling, degrading, and overall rude attitudes of my teammates. One even stated I looked miserable and I deserved better.
TW: Sexual Content
During this season, I would attend meetings but would often leave feeling defeated. It seemed that nothing I ever did was “good enough”, and nothing I had accomplished was recognized on the same level as my teammates’ past accomplishments. My roommates and friends also noticed this treatment-- many expressed that they would have quit if they were treated half as bad as I was. In addition to this, there were many encounters where one specific team member would describe his sexual experiences to me in detail, despite me expressing I did not want to hear them and how it made me uncomfortable. I would leave the room when this happened, and it got to a point where it almost felt like his mission was to get me to leave. Of course, I did not want to hear of anyone's sexual experiences, especially not in an environment that is typically supposed to be a professional workplace.At our meetings, I was routinely left in a separate room to clean prints because it was “something even [I] can’t mess up”. Once, I was left in a separate room for almost 4 hours-- the one time I had walked into the field room, I was immediately told to leave because my teammates had to “think of routes”, despite me having already drawn up several. After this, instead of carpooling with another member of the team, I ended up calling my roommate to come pick me up from the meeting. My teammates never noticed that I had left-- the individual who I had originally planned to leave with texted me half an hour later that we should be getting ready to leave. This is one of many meetings where I felt like a child given busy work: yes, it’s work, and someone has to do it, but it was the only thing I was ever allowed to do.
Tower Takeover Reveal
When it came time to film our Tower Takeover reveal, I had explicitly expressed my interest, but again the priority for decision-making was given to those outside of our team. Many of my teammates, along with these other competitors, excluded me from their discussions in regards to where our reveal would be filmed and when it would be released: in fact, they made a hidden thread without me simply to discuss this topic. Alongside our ‘actual’ reveal, my team had also released a ‘meme reveal’; I was yet again excluded from this discussion. In this meme reveal were ‘funny’ pictures and/or videos of BCUZ team members, and the picture they included of me was taken out-of-context and could easily be interpreted as a sexual innuendo. I only found out about this video after an individual I had never spoken to before messaged me it as he felt I should know-- this was six days after the video was posted and was circulating around the community. I had never given permission to include this picture, but when I expressed being upset about the inappropriate usage of said photo, I was told I “should be happy I was included because the freshmen were not”. Again, I was invalidated.Towards the end of the Tower Takeover season, I endured consistent gaslighting, criticism, and a constant feeling of walking on eggshells. I could not predict what would ‘set my teammates off’, but it seemed like every interaction I had with them would end in some sort of tension. I was often told that I was not fully committed to the team primarily because I would not nearly-live in the room. As a college student, I took time and studied for what I needed-- I had felt, and still do feel, that my academic commitments should be prioritized over robotics whenever need be. I often did not feel welcomed in the robotics room; in fact, I was asked to not attend meetings or be in the building room at all when a certain teammate was building because I “made his mind wander” and “made him think”. Obviously, this comment made me uncomfortable and so I did not attend meetings as regularly as I had been. A few weeks later, I expressed frustrations only to be met with “if [I] attended more, maybe we’d respect you”-- again, the opposite of what I had been originally told. I was not able to meet their requirements, I was either too active or not active enough. Similarly, I was told I was not allowed to type in the Robotics discord servers when my teammate was active because he was annoyed by my presence, and because of me, he had to “filter what he wanted to say”.’
Cyberbullying
I was told I needed to have a conversation about my status on the team after weeks of my teammates telling others I was “iffy” about my involvement. I did not make the decision to be “iffy”-- rather, other individuals on my team did. I had a three week time span where I was free to discuss concerns, but I explicitly stated I could not do April 15th because I had an exam on the morning of April 16th. However, on the morning of April 16th, I woke up to a sudden message at 4 AM. This message consisted of what at the time seemed like a ‘novel’ of things I needed to do (or not do) in order to be allowed on “his” team. The team is not an independent team-- it is funded by our university. When I responded, obviously upset, I was told “It is 4 am, this is meant to start a conversation but not right now”. Very rarely was I able to begin a conversation or verbalize my concerns (despite my efforts), but on April 17 I got a call from this teammate at 3 AM. When I told him that only contacting me at such late times was not appropriate, his response was to the effect of “If you leave, you’ve sealed your faith”. The entire conversation consisted of his side only; when it was my turn to speak, he refused to hear me out stating that it was late and he should sleep. Once again, I was the one at blame, with him noting the timing of the conversation to be my fault.
When I expressed my frustrations of the lack of conversation, this same member later replied with “the difference is I can ignore you if I want to”. Obviously, this was meant to belittle me and tear me down, and by this time my patience was up. Teammates continued to tell others that I was “iffy” about continuing the team-- they were only not sure of my status because they would not communicate with me. Instead, they did everything in their power to push me out. Upon expressing that it was due time for some answers a few weeks later, I was then sent a “pog-fish” meme instead. When I responded “you do not have to be my friend, but respect me enough as a person to answer me”, I was sent another “pog-fish”. I closed discord and decided to cool off a bit before continuing.
Unfortunately, upon opening the app again, I was met with more pog-fish references. The “joke” had spread to the point of seemingly every competitor’s status in every server I was involved with. I could not type, or be mentioned at all, without pog-fish being sent as an instant response. In fact, I could not even be online. As soon as the mentions had died down, I’d come online and anyone involved would immediately start again. The specific teammate who started this alongside his friends (from other teams) knew the context as well, as well as most of the other members on BCUZ at that time. Though context was limited, the trend spread very quickly because others joined in “on the fun”, not knowing the reason behind the meme being sent. While these ‘other’ individuals thought it was just a funny meme, they were unknowingly participating in a form of targeted cyberbullying. The meme ended up being posted on Instagram accounts as well. After a few weeks, I figured it had died down-- I turned my status on, but again pog-fish started circulating on people’s statuses. At this point, I had left the servers I was previously active in: because of the unnecessary childish “joke”, I could not simply exist in the communities I once belonged to. Other competitors noticed my absence and asked what had happened, but instead of answering my teammates and their friends would respond with pog-fish.
Overall, my social reputation I had had in the VEX community was stripped from me and ruined. I was labeled many things and my story was only told from one side - their side. I was regularly made out to be the bad guy, despite my best efforts to keep the peace. After 5 months of no progress and no responses, I asked for my parts, cortex, drill and other things back. In this case, I had an immediate response. The story again was turned, and I was once again labeled the bad guy. I was returned some of my things, however not all, in fact some of my tools, V5, and parts are still being used. I was blocked before reviewing any parts I had gotten back.
When all of this concluded, for some time I considered even switching to a non-STEM major: I had been conditioned into believing that this was what the workforce would be like once I graduated, and the trauma I had endured while remaining on BCUZ pushed me away from my passions. While I did end up remaining as an engineering major, the decision for me to leave BCUZ, or “quit”, was not one I made on my own. That decision was made for me. Upon leaving the team, I was offered to join five other VEXU teams because they saw value in me; however, due to my experience I could not bring myself to compete. After all of this, I experienced a lot of anxiety surrounding robotics and the mention of it, I was stripped of the enjoyment of competing and I was convinced the community would never hear my side. I tried to stick around in hopes that things would be better when Jenna joined. I did not want someone else to experience the things I experienced and I hoped things would neutralize.
Jenna:
The Beginning: Change Up and QIPE
After graduating HS in 2020, I was ecstatic to continue my passion in robotics on BCUZ-- without robotics, I don’t know where I would be today. I am forever thankful for the community I’ve been privileged enough to meet, but unfortunately, the buildup of these internal events have pushed me towards an inability to continue competing with BCUZ, and I can no longer continue to bear the treatment I’ve had to endure.CU was a strange season to start VEXU, being that COVID had left us extremely limited in terms of in-person contact. My first ‘real’ encounter competing on the university level was QIPE; this was also my first encounter with the treatment I’d continue to endure for years to come. Leeanna had just quit earlier in the year-- I was left in the dark about much of this, and assumed she had left on her own without much to do with the rest of the team.
At QIPE (“Quality In Person Event”-- the competition that effectively replaced VEXU Worlds during COVID), teams had a six-person limit, and to counter this we were told that we would be registering another team as a ‘throw-away’ to bring the amount of people who were willing to come and dedicate their times to the ‘actual’ team. We brought nine people from Clemson and three others to compete alongside us; in the several weeks before attendance, I worked endlessly on programming user control and autons, and rewrote our notebooks to the highest quality possible for submission. When we arrived, however, our programmers and the only other girl on the team (a drive coach) were booted onto this ‘throw-away’ team, and made to compete as drivers of our old (particularly, the first design of the season) robots. We were not allowed to touch our actual robots, and we were not allowed to do anything that would show our efforts in the weeks before attending QIPE. With none of us being builders or drivers, we were of course offended, and when I brought this up the night after, I was told by one of the members who didn’t attend our school that I wasn’t dedicated enough to be competing with the ‘actual’ team. Unfortunately, this was just the start of what was to come.
Experiences During Tipping Point
Exclusion and Gatekeeping
The beginning of the TiP season was reasonably normal; I was busy with school, so didn’t have much time to work, but tried my best to be there as often as possible and wrote the notebook/programmed for the team when competition season came about. Around February, things started to feel strange: it felt like people were omitting me from conversations, but despite asking about this I was assured that this was not the case. Then came the Purdue scrim: I was super excited to go, was the first to express interest, and had been verbalizing my excitement in the room to other team members. But when the event came around and we finalized the people going, I was somehow left out of the list. When I asked, I was assured that it was simply looked over; however it seemed that people were frustrated about having to bring an extra car just because of me. I ended up going, and once there I found out that there in fact were things being hidden from me. What was hidden from me was the most major aspect of our design during TiP, and I was told about this before, but somehow this was forgotten about. They posed this in a big ‘reveal’ to me at that scrimmage, where I was told that they had kept it a secret because they didn’t want their leeks to get out and they were worried I wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret in the same way that they could (despite already knowing about it).Misconduct and (More) Exclusion - 2022 Worlds
At Worlds that year, a somewhat similar situation happened to that at the Purdue scrim: I was prevented from attending HS worlds to watch and help out the teams I’ve mentored since I was in high school, all because “it wouldn’t at all be fun… we are just gonna be mad the whole time… there’s not much of a point in going, we don’t even wanna go ourselves”. I had to buy a plane ticket to be able to both make it there and back; before arrival, I was told that the other members of the team who already arrived would be able to give me and my teammate a ride back to the BNB, but once I arrived I had to buy an Uber as they were “too tired to pick us up”.When HS worlds came about, I found out that the big reason I was pushed out was to let two others, who were not on our team, come and take me and one other member’s place at the BNB. Instead of attending worlds and mentoring their teams, my teammates spent that time partying and fooling around, with them excitedly speaking and posting online about their experiences afterwards. On top of this, during our time actively competing, I was frequently ignored-- many of the calls I made when I was on the drive team were disregarded, but those same calls ended up being the reason we lost the matches. One match, I was even told to “shut the f*ck up” and that what I was saying wasn’t at all helpful. During this time, instead of being referred to by my name, I was often just referred to as “woman” by other members on my team.
Spin Up: My Last Straw(s)
Merchandise Design and “Progress Updates”
Then comes this season, which I would argue puts the rest of my experiences to shame. The treatment this year far exceeds the severity of earlier seasons, with frequent circumstances of being put down, embarrassed, or disheartened for my efforts. Among the first of these was the situation with the merch I had made: out of nowhere, it was brought to my attention that the team was planning on making new merch, and when I asked why, I was told it was because the current release was “sh*t”. The decision to make new shirts was done in private, and being that we were incredibly budget- and time-limited last season, I was offended by the sudden motion to call my efforts bad.I had suggested that if they were unhappy with my design choices, they could have critiqued it and I would have been happy to go back and make edits according to those critiques. After that, things went silent for a while, up until I brought up the idea of “progress updates” to motivate team-wide communication. Being college students, it can get difficult to be in the room 24/7; though some members would stay in there overnight, I and many others were not among that group, and it was difficult to understand our team decisions and workflow without sacrificing our academic stability and free time to do so. For that reason, I raised the option of having a dedicated channel for design process milestones. Although this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, I was told that this would be “micromanagement”, “unnecessary”, and that “organization impedes productivity”. Rather, others would be in the room until 3 or 4 AM every night-- why couldn’t I do the same?
After this point, I dropped the conversation, and things again went silent until I heard that one of the freshman members of BCUZ was telling a HS competitor I previously mentored that my team in high school was “problematic” and that I was the reason for this. Around the same time, I was asked to spend my time over winter break (between around Christmas and New Years) drawing new designs for merchandise, unpaid. I decided at that point (December 28, 2022) that I wouldn’t do any further work until I was respected as a member of the team. The member who specified me as problematic was one that I had talked to only once up until then, and never competed with or against in high school. The only reason this opinion of me could have come up was if I were being talked about behind my back, by other members of the team. Upon bringing my concerns up, I was told that this was a “personal” problem that “derails the team” and is a “distraction… that shouldn’t affect my work on the notebook”.
On New Years, the upcoming president released an announcement about implementing the same progress updates he previously labeled unnecessary-- and this was to be not just in one dedicated channel, but four; one for builders, one for programmers, one for documentation, and one for skills. In the same message, I found out that I was demoted from documentation lead, with one of the first-years replacing me. When I asked about this, I was told that it was done because I was “unreliable” and “didn’t make my deadlines”-- I can only assume this is because I had to withdraw, only for a few days at that point, from doing work until I could receive respect for the efforts I was putting in. Again, I dropped it; there was really nothing I could do. The officers of the team are not elected, and the leads are not elected either; they are simply chosen without notice, and with this, the decision-makers of our organization will most often take the same stance on motions that should be up for further discussion. I was extremely offended by these accusations against me, having never missed a deadline for notebook submission nor writing programs before, but couldn’t necessarily do anything to speak up.
Mid Competition Season: Kalahari -> Worlds
When competition season came about (Kalahari), the robots were not finished at all. They were simply drivetrains, and nothing more-- ironic, given that I was the one who wasn’t making deadlines. The notebook is written in portions according to each robot; they have to be ‘merged’ into one large notebook before submission, and I had established that we need at least a day for me to do this and print before the tournament. While I finished my part right around that day-prior deadline, the now-lead documentation member did not. He pushed his deadline back not once, not twice, but to the point where he finished at 1:30 PM on the car ride to Ohio, as opposed to the 6:00 PM deadline on the day before. While waiting for him to finish, I had to stay up for 30 hours straight. We had to print at the Staples there, and I had to facetime a friend to submit the notebook for printing for me due to limited WiFi. This situation didn’t only occur once: it happened at TigerTown, too, and many of the following events.My team flew the same individual who told me I wasn’t dedicated enough to compete with the team during QIPE to compete with us again at Kalahari, and to serve as a builder and programmer in preparation for TigerTown. Although I was assured that the individual in question was a college student, I have since discovered that these were lies-- the member has seemingly not been in college since graduating high school, and BCUZ has been illegally letting this individual compete as a member of our team. This was confirmed to me by other competitors in this member’s region. While others outside of the team pointed this out to me after seeing them on the drive team at Kalahari, I was hesitant to tell a RECF representative; I had no way of knowing for sure whether I was being lied to, and gave this individual the benefit of the doubt. There were times where their statements went against what I was told in the sense of them being a full-time college student (or a college student at all), but I had ignorantly assumed that it was simply a misinterpretation on my end. This individual is even listed as a team member in our engineering notebook; their flight to Clemson was paid for, and local members saw no issue in letting them compete with us as a member of BCUZ.
At Kalahari, we won Design. At TigerTown, we won Excellence. At Purdue, we won Design. Despite this, I was frequently told things like how design doesn’t really matter, and the only award that “matters” is Tournament Champion or Excellence at Worlds. And despite that, there were frequent occasions of other team members bragging about our Worlds qualifications. A high school competitor was messaged by our lead builder that I “only write what he tells me”, and that same person said in the Vex Teams of South Carolina discord that we “could’ve won excellence even with a dog notebook”. Almost every time I saw another team member speaking about our awards, it was either putting me down or discrediting me from the efforts put towards them. During our competitions, even other teams noticed the way I was treated: I was told several times that people had felt sorry for me, seeing the way my teammates spoke to me. Even parents would call out the way I was treated while competing.
On top of all of this, although I had expressed interest in being a member of the drive team again this season, I was never followed up with. At competitions, I am not even allowed to look at the drive team when they compete during matches-- I have to be somewhere their backs are facing, even if that means I’m not in the room at all. When I asked why, I was told they wanted to “limit distractions as much as possible” so as to “not throw off the drivers”. Even after matches, I am limited in my ability to speak to members of my own team; in the times I’ve tried, I have simply been cut off from continuing, even if it’s vital to our performance-- whether that be in or out of matches. Specifically, I can recall one example at Kalahari where we had an upcoming interview right after a match, and I was making sure that each of my teammates knew their parts. When I started drilling our drive team members, one of them blatantly ignored my interview rundown. I had to give our other documentation member the outline of what he was expected to be talking about so he could catch him up instead: while relaying this information, another drive team member told me that this member “ignores me because he only listens to the people he respects”.
Most Recent Events
Just recently, we started making plans for going to Worlds again, and in this I was given the same excuse for not being able to go to HS worlds as I was told last year: it wouldn’t be any fun, the extra time there was going to be constantly working, etc. In addition to this, I was told that it was only the drive team who would be going, and nothing I was doing had to do with the team competing and practicing beforehand, so I shouldn’t need to go at all (despite other programmers and documentation members going, with no issues whatsoever). I was told that there would be little chance of us receiving an excuse to go for HS worlds-- but when I asked the current president, he said that it wouldn’t be much of an issue at all, and he would be fine with asking for me. Despite the time I’ve invested into the team, and despite the long-running proof of my efforts paying off, I was left with no ability to go and see the competitors I’ve watched grow up and excel, and no chance of arguing for my side of things.This past weekend, I found out that I have been called “untrustworthy” by an individual who has frequently expressed that they have no issue with me whatsoever (for reference, this is the same person that our team flew cross-country to illegally compete with us at Kalahari and TigerTown). Upon asking for permission for me to provide advice on the notebooks of the middle school teams they are paid to mentor, they said that the other (first-year, now lead) documentation member “writes most of the notebook” and there was no reason for me to give additional insight. In fact, if I did join to give advice, they would go so far as to leave the discord server of a club they have worked with for what’s approaching five years.
This was my personal breaking point. There have been many close calls for last straws, from members staying in the room overnight to the point of living there, to ignored university reports on the behaviors of my teammates, to blatantly putting me down and making excuses for me not to receive any recognition for my efforts. I’ve been holding on for so long to try to prove that I mean something-- anything-- on the team I’ve been so passionate about. But at this point, I can’t do it anymore. There isn’t anything more that I can do when there is little reason for me to have to prove my worth in the first place. I’ve always questioned why I am treated the way I am, and the only thought I can reasonably come to is misogyny, or simply bullying. I’ve tried many times to bring this to the attention of the officers of the team; however, there has been little change, and most of the time I would get an excuse along the lines of how me and the president are both graduating soon and there’s little left to be done. Another previous team member also tried to bring up similar concerns; in time, he ended up being kicked off the team and all associations between him and BCUZ were removed.
Several reports associated with this statement’s content have been created thus far: one in December, one in February, and two just this week. The one in December was completely ignored by the university, and the one in February had some actions taken, but this was involved with the cleanliness of the team and the team’s work habits quickly deteriorated again after the in-person inspections were no longer required. Among the two other reports that have been made more recently, one is to RECF for knowingly having an illegal competitor on the team and violating in lying to other teammates to cover for the illegal competitor, alongside sexism, harassment (see Leeanna’s reflections on “pogfish”), and exclusion. Upon being called into a meeting April 8 to discuss the RECF report, the President’s immediate response (as of April 7, 2023) was that he will “take a bullet” for the team- he was in a room with other individuals who told me this information (few, but not many, knew of me ‘privately’ quitting the team at this time). Another teammate, who was in the room with the President, was speaking with him about how they assumed this had to do with the illegal competitor on the team. Since then, they seem to have been deleting any incriminating messages of that member’s violations, assumedly in order to cover up these actions.
(Screenshotted November 02, 2022)
(Screenshotted April 08, 2023)
As of November 02, 2022 - 588 Results
Total Messages, Filtered Before Nov 03 2022 - Screenshotted April 08, 2023 - 447 Results
As of ‘privately’ leaving the team (at this point, not saying anything to the team in fear of the retaliation that may occur), I have attempted to reserve my intellectual property by removing any of the notebooks that were 100% my own (those in archive, and any PDFs for submission I compiled)-- I am somewhat planning on publicly releasing these notebooks for other competitors to reference. BCUZ is not aware of this plan as of this statement’s release, but it seems that upon the now-lead documentation member noticing that I removed my archived notebooks, he immediately brought this to the attention of the rest of the team, and has since restored them and downloaded them locally for his own reference in the future. Since this, he has been joining a number of servers of teams I am close to or generally servers I am in: he scrolled up to 2020 to find an invite for the AUBIE1 discord server from the Alabama discord server, and AUBIE1 is a fairly direct connection to both me and Leeanna. He was left in this server for most of the night and revealed much of what was supposed to be private information (“leaks”) to BCUZ.
Since joining the team, this documentation member has been looking for any information about other teams to send to BCUZ, and a lot of the time, this is used as fuel for belittlement (such as to teams EZPZ, AUBIE1, NUKE, and RIT). After he was selected to replace me as documentation lead, he has been ignoring anything I comment on in regards to notebook critiques: even pointing out items as simple as styling fixes, typos, or missing sentences is ignored, and on top of missing deadlines for compilation (“merging”) I have been left to address this on my own during the subteam notebook->merge into master notebook->submission process. When I ask for clarification while writing entries (formatted as “yes” or “no” questions, directed towards the BCUZ builders as most will often not respond if they have to put too much effort into it), the first-year, now lead documentation member will often jump into this conversation and speak down to me as if these questions are something I should already know: he doesn’t answer the “this” or “that”, “yes” or “no”; he makes the response into a mystery I am responsible for solving. Though more minor than some of the other information involved in this statement, I felt it important to address in raising my concerns.
In short, there has not been a single time on BCUZ where I felt accepted. Despite the fact that I consider robotics as a shaping factor of my identity, despite it being my passion, despite my efforts to pursue robotics as a career after graduation, the time I have spent on the team has done nothing but put me down. In hearing Leeanna’s experiences, I was appalled by the similarities-- this is something I would never wish upon my worst enemies, and all I wish is for aspiring young women like us to feel like they belong. I hate to have to resort to this, but after bringing my concerns up to the officers of the team and receiving a multitude of empty promises, and after enduring such treatment for what is now three years, I can no longer stay silent. And to BCUZ: I wish you the best, but I sincerely hope you can do better than this in the future.