Ithaca High’s Code Red prepares for next build season

Build season is less than a month away for Code Red, Ithaca High School’s robotics team (team639.org). For now, the team is enjoying some much-needed downtime before they face six straight weeks of constant work to prepare for the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition next spring.

Code Red has gone through considerable changes since the last time Tompkins Weekly ran an article on the group just before the pandemic hit back in 2020 (tinyurl.com/2z3kbf3x). For one, the team has greatly increased in size, from roughly 60 in the 2019-20 team to 85 this season, welcoming nearly 50 new members this fall.

This year, Code Red is led by seven officers: Emerson Schryver, president; Annalise Thompson and Wali Alfridi, vice presidents/build team managers; Alex Elia, community outreach; Celene Sahoo, treasurer; Shaine Wei, team administrator; and Jennifer Zhao, PR officer.

Schryver said that most of the club’s growth is due to a couple factors — Code Red was one of the few clubs at Ithaca High School still active throughout the pandemic, and the club formed a new diversity sub-team in 2021.

“We look at some of the statistics that we have about our club and realize that we definitely need to create a diversity sub team, and so, we’ve, I think, started to notice some of the effects of that,” he said. “A lot of it is word of mouth. … So, once you have a lot of people who are passionate about Code Red, they’ll talk to their friends about how they should join too. And so, what we’re starting to see is that the type of people who are doing that is less just people who look like me.”

Wei added that diversity to Code Red also entails appealing to a broad range of interests.

“It’s not supposed to be an elite club full of VIP members who are only good at programming,” she said. “It’s not important if you don’t have any experience in any of these engineering fields or any of these technical fields because joining Code Red is a learning process.”

On top of a membership increase, the pandemic also facilitated a significant digital boost to the club’s functioning.

“2021, we are forced to have a fully online team for one year and then another year was like some people could come in person, but only an eighth of the team maybe at any one time,” Thompson said. “So, we have all of the mechanisms now in place for a lot of online collaboration that we didn’t have before COVID. So, we’re now able to integrate that into our in-person sessions to kind of especially help communication. It’s just opened a lot of new channels.”

For the FIRST competition, Code Red members build a 125-pound robot according to that year’s theme. Thompson said that while they won’t know the challenge until early next month, they know it’ll at least be different from more recent competitions, which were all very similar if not the same sort of challenge largely due to the pandemic (tinyurl.com/2duqjhef).

Though build season has yet to start, the team has had plenty of bonding experiences so far both for its own members and for the community. On Oct. 22, for example, Code Red members attended Ra Cha Cha Ruckus, a small competition featuring last year’s FIRST robots, allowing attendees to learn more about Code Red and how it all works.

Earlier in the year, Code Red also brought one of its robots to Streets Alive!, where residents and visitors alike got a close-up look at the product of Code Red members’ hard work. And on Oct. 11, team members worked with the Friends of Stewart Park to pick up litter, trim invasive plants and clean the playground at Stewart Park.

In addition to the community benefit, Code Red members shared that they’ve also gotten lots of great experience out of Code Red that they plan to carry into their post-high-school lives.

“You interact with so many adults to just get technical things done, and Jennifer sends out PR updates, and she works with other adults to draft an article,” Sahoo said. “And I think it’s very important to know how to email and communicate with people when you’re an adult, and Code Red definitely gives you a lot of opportunities to use Gmail. So, a lot of emails are sent. And that’s a very important skill.”

Thompson emphasized the email aspect as well as the team dynamics.

“A big thing I’ve learned from it is working with a team and also managing another team member below you,” she said. “It took me a year to finally get used to having the confidence to send out an email that goes to 80 people at the same time that doesn’t have an undo button. And I am planning to go into engineering specifically in robotics once I graduate and start working, so it’s good to kind of see these skills on a team where we kind of get to define the direction we go in and have that creativity to build the robot how we want.”

Elia referenced the group’s diverse interests.

“You get to explore a lot of your interests,” they said. “And I think that’s very valuable, especially as a person in high school, because you have a chance to figure out what you’re interested in as something to pursue for the future. So, Code Red, for some people, is an opportunity to gain a baseline in a lot of different things. And for some people, it’s an opportunity to explore a very specialized topic and get good at it to use for the future focus, which are very useful.”

Zhao drew attention to the team bonding aspect and community connections.

“Another thing that everyone gets out Code Red is that sense of community and those relationships that you build along the way but you might have not been able to have without joining the program,” she said. “You learn how to work and work as a team, collaborate, share ideas without being embarrassed of yourself or being scared that your idea is not good enough.”

Since they’ve all been with Code Red for at least a year, the team officers are looking forward to working with new team members during build season. Sahoo shared a message for those new students to prepare them for what’s ahead.

“You should prioritize school over Code Red because that is more important,” she said. “We also offer opportunities [where] you can take a break during build. If you’re at build, you don’t have to constantly be working on the robot or doing Code Red-related stuff. So, I think people should just be smart and take care of themselves so that they get their work done instead of forcing themselves to work on the robot when it’s more important for them to have a good state of mind and be productive.”

Zhao provided another piece of advice for those “rookies” on how best to navigate Code Red’s busiest time of the year.

“The best thing you can do is come in with an open mind,” she said. “Be willing to learn, be willing to work as a group sharing ideas, listen to others.”

For more information on Code Red, email advisor Ian Krywe at ikrywe@icsd.k12.ny.us or visit team639.org.

Jessica Wickham is the managing editor of Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to them at editorial@VizellaMedia.com.