Letter to the Editor: ROTC’s early morning run was wrong

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    Dear Editor:

    I am writing in regards to two recently published letters. One complained about the ROTC’s early morning run through on-campus housing. The second accused the first of being ungrateful for the sacrifice of the military. Having been enlisted for five years I would like to clarify what is really going on.

    If you want to consider the ROTC as a part of the military, you must consider BYU as their duty station. At a military post, training units do not march or run through residential areas of non-trainees. They are prohibited from sounding off in residential areas during sleeping hours. The ROTC as a training unit has no business marching or running through on-campus housing yelling and screaming when students are trying to sleep.

    As a military unit, the ROTC is out of line with its run. The sad thing is that the ROTC commanding officers specifically told their cadets they wanted to wake up students and wanted to receive “at least five complaints to The Daily Universe” because they didn’t get any last year. They actually had the goal of taking away the rights of the students who were sleeping.

    This is wrong. In my military career I have respected certain ROTC cadets as individuals, but as a whole I have seen and experienced too many situations where the ROTC program has lost the right to be respected as a whole. The traditional early morning run has nothing to do with our nation’s security, but falls along the lines of ROTC’s traditional unearned arrogance.

    I also ask that the enlisted soldiers of the United States Armed Forces not be equated with the cadets of the ROTC, we work too hard for that.

    Scott Howell

    Provo

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