Watertown High School

Robotics club that operates within Watertown High School

Small town communities, and small town functions are always thought of to be charming upon first glance. They’re small, quaint, and supposedly humble, as the connotation goes. Small and quaint they may be, Team 237 Robotics has been anything but humble in the ways of which it approaches its numerous endeavours, and serves as a highlight of just how exclusive, contained, and even elitist at times, a small town community can be.

Before I cover some of the more overarching issues, I’m going to begin discussing some more intrinsic issues, the club has had numerous examples of elitist behaviour promoted by both its members and the inherent design of it. Let’s begin with the seniority system. The seniority system restricts authority to only the highest grade-level peers, ensuring seniors always hold top authority regardless of general ability. You have to have stayed in the club for four consecutive years, or your seniority is effectively tarnished and you’re far less likely to achieve automatic seniority benefits within the club. This system forces new members to the club to demonstrate their ‘dedication’ by being assigned trivial jobs for the first year or even two years of their time at the club, which ultimately can dissuade new members due to the dismissive nature of the senior leaders and the rather resolute way in which they are forced into jobs.

Always ones to impress, there was a previous attempt at adopting an electoral system into the club that allowed the ability for lower grade levels to obtain activities, benefits, or responsibilities similar to those of a high seniority level, however it was eventually dismissed. An electoral system, or at least mind-set, would have encouraged the club to become more group oriented. After pressuring and not entirely honest tactics were used by upcoming seniors to influence and promote their ‘rightful seniority’ from being threatened as it were, the previous leader was forced to step down. The new leaders had then entirely abolished the electoral system, content with their power and ability to command others that they had waited and counted on since, presumably, their freshman year at Team 237 Robotics.

Drawing back to previous points, the ‘robotic’ nature of which members are handled is not entirely uninfluenced or equal to all who participate in the club, which doesn’t sound like an immediate issue at first, but one must realise the following if they consider this club: Those who donate money will be given special treatment and exemptions, those whose parents are involved with the school or the club will be able to conduct executive meddling as necessary and will hold authority regardless.

Let us not forget that there are numerous activities that can be mandated by the seniority leaders, such as meetings, fundraisers, and so forth. Failure to attend will not always result in consequences, depending on your seniority, status, and whether or not anybody of higher seniority wants you gone. In a modern school that’s taken some form a stance against bullying… why is such an archaic seniority system present in such heavy effect?

Eventually, one must come to the decision of attending a club. Membership since new leadership and recent dramatic debacles has caused this club to lost popularity among students quickly, and the harsher nature of the new leaders has forced it to once again experience a drought of members. What this club realises is that it is not a luxury for the town, its existence is not beneficial or desirable to the town, and its existence is not something the town needs to be expected to uphold. It should not use aristocratic walls to bar itself from the common citizen, and it needs to be more open to the concepts of paying for goods, gauging proper advertisement and employment for those positions that cannot be covered by students, and become more open to the concept of being truly humble to the townspeople. Additionally, when it comes to new practises not yet made widespread in smaller towns, the club needs smart individuals and perhaps aid to be caught up with the times.

Yet, despite this message having been conveyed before, it has been dismissed as irrelevant simply due to the speaker, solidifying the issue of this club’s self-image. Possible improvements would be revamping the seniority system into a socialist process (which is more effective on small scales, especially when everyone should know of each other, like a school setting- in that instance one’s desired seniority may even come to fruition if they are determined to be legitimately intelligent enough to hold it by the members.), learning proper advertising and modern publication tactics. A flyer of theirs said to visit their site at one point, only for it to be down upon visit, which was quite questionable.

I personally would not recommend this club under any circumstances until it improves.