SpectrumBits Team Rules & Commitment Agreement

1. Attendance & Commitment

This is the core of the agreement. Read it carefully.

Minimum attendance: You must attend at least 80% of scheduled sessions each build season to remain an active member of the team. This is tracked, not assumed.

If you can't make a session

• You must notify a mentor or your lead at least 24 hours in advance — not five minutes before, not "I'm not coming" as you're supposed to be walking in.
• "I'm busy" is not a valid excuse on its own. You need to say why.

Responding to team messages

If a mentor or lead messages you (GroupMe/Discord/etc.), you're expected to respond before the next session at the latest. Going dark and reappearing like nothing happened is treated the same as an unexcused absence.

Consequence ladder for unexcused absences or ghosting

1. 1st unexcused miss / ghost incident: Verbal warning + conversation with a mentor about what's going on.
2. 2nd unexcused miss / ghost incident: Formal warning. Team captain/lead and mentor discuss your role on the team; may result in reduced responsibility (removed from a sub-team lead position, fewer critical tasks assigned to you).
3. 3rd unexcused miss / ghost incident (or falling below 80% attendance without valid excuses): Removal from the team, decided by the team captain/lead with mentor sign-off.

2. Roles & Getting Actual Work Done

Showing up isn't the same as contributing. "I didn't know what to do" is not an excuse under this system, because:

• Every member has a fixed role on a sub-team (mechanical, programming, CAD, electrical, outreach, etc.) — this is your default responsibility.
• At the start of every session, your sub-team lead assigns specific tasks for that session. You should leave every session knowing exactly what you're doing next.
• If you finish your task early or get stuck, you ask your lead or a mentor for the next task — you don't just sit there or disappear to another room.
• If you consistently do the minimum or avoid real work, that's addressed directly by a mentor, and repeated avoidance is treated like an attendance issue (see consequence ladder above).

3. Shop Rules (Tools & Space)

Kept simple — we trust you to be sensible, but these are non-negotiable:

• Safety glasses on for cutting, drilling, grinding, or soldering. No exceptions.
• Don't use a tool you haven't been shown how to use — ask a mentor first.
• Closed-toe shoes in the shop. Tie back long hair around power tools.
• Batteries are never left charging unattended.
• Announce "testing!" before running the robot so people know to stand clear.
• Clean up after yourself — the shop isn't a maid service.

4. General Conduct

• Respect your teammates and mentors. No demeaning teammates over mistakes — everyone is learning.
• Settle technical disagreements with testing and reasoning, not by shouting or shutting people out.
• No horseplay near tools or the robot when it's powered on.
• If you disagree with a mentor's decision, say so and explain your reasoning — we want you to think, not just comply. But the final call on safety and major decisions rests with mentors.

5. Why This Matters

FTC is a real commitment and a real opportunity — competitions, awards, and scholarships all depend on the team actually functioning as a team. One or two people ghosting or not pulling their weight puts extra pressure on everyone else and can sink a season. This agreement exists so everyone knows exactly what's expected, and so nobody gets blindsided by a consequence they didn't see coming.

6. Team Leadership & Governance

To keep decisions clear and avoid confusion about who has final say, here's how leadership is structured on this team:

Co-Directors

• Miss Zeynep — Director overseeing the PR/Outreach department. All PR/Outreach activity and decisions report to her.
• Diosan Stefan (student) — Director overseeing the Hardware and Software departments. All Hardware and Software activity and decisions report to him.

Team Mentors / Advisors

• Oguz Salgur
• Mr. Osman

Team Mentors/Advisors oversee day-to-day work, enforce shop and conduct rules, and handle warnings/attendance issues as described above. They report into the Co-Directors on anything beyond routine matters.

Major decisions — Co-Director approval required

For the most critical decisions affecting the whole team, both Co-Directors must agree before anything moves forward. No exceptions, no single-person override. This applies to:

• Terminating the team (ending the program entirely — not removing an individual member)
• Any major spending/budget decision
• Booking transportation or accommodation (competitions, travel, etc.)

7. Intellectual Property & Ownership

To avoid disputes over who owns what, ownership of work created for the team is defined as follows:

Sole ownership — Diosan Stefan

All CAD files, hardware design concepts, and software created by Diosan Stefan are owned exclusively by him. He retains full rights to use, license, or repurpose this work as he sees fit, including outside the team. He may:

• Revoke the team's access to any of his work with 24 hours' notice.
• Request permanent deletion of all copies of his work; the team must comply within 7 days of the request.
  Exception: if a competition event falls within that 7-day window, the deletion deadline is extended until 7 days after the event ends, so the team isn't left without working code/CAD mid-competition. Access revocation itself (the 24-hour notice) still applies regardless of timing — the team simply keeps the last version they had and loses the ability to receive further updates or new access.
• If access is revoked, the team keeps whatever version of the work was already in use up to that point; the team just loses the ability to receive updates or further access going forward.

Sole ownership — Bogdan Gabor

All software created by Bogdan Gabor (including code and access to that code) is owned exclusively by him, under the same terms as above (24-hour access revocation, 7-day deletion window with the same competition-week exception, team retains the last working version already in use).

Shared ownership — other members

CAD files, hardware design concepts, software, images, promotional/PR content, social media posts, sponsor materials/decks, branding or logo work, and written guides or documentation created by any other member are shared ownership between that member and the team. This means:

• The team may use this work and build on it, including for future robots or projects.
• The team cannot sell it, license it, or otherwise profit from it without the creator's permission — even after that member has left the team.
• The creator retains full rights to use their own work elsewhere.
• The creator cannot revoke the team's access to work already shared, and cannot request its deletion once it's been shared with the team (unlike the sole-ownership terms above).

Team-owned materials

Materials created collectively for and owned by the team — such as the team's 15-page season manual — belong to the team as a whole, not to any individual. Sharing team-owned materials with outside parties during a competition requires approval from at least one Co-Director first.