Strange Scene

As I strolled onto a local university campus to take some shots of fading light and Spanish style architecture, I came around a corner and saw uniformed soldiers carrying guns and setting up a perimeter. At first I thought there might be another campus shooting or something worse, but I hadn't run into anything that suggested local law enforcement involvement. They pretty much ignored me as well. Finally, I asked these two what was up and they told me they were with ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps). They were practicing various urban warfare strategies on campus while school was in session, with students and teachers walking about. Now, I don't know if the school had informed everyone on campus about this exercise, but coming off the street from a local neighborhood and seeing this was a little unnerving.

I was told the guns were not real and everyone had been instructed not to point them at anyone - the barrels had to be pointed at the ground. However, one time I turned around and a person laying prone had the gun pointed right at me.

I did a little treatment on this to make it look a little more surreal because that's how it felt. These ROTC groups are located on most campuses across the nation and these people are students who are hoping to become officers in the armed services. When I asked one of them if he really wanted to go to Afghanistan or Iraq to fight, he told me there was a long Que of ROTC students getting ready to go once they had finished their training.

I'm going to leave my opinion out of this. However, I decided after much thought to post this shot to see what opinions the blip community might have about young students training in universities to become officers in the military services, practicing like this on an open, in session campus.

Nothing more to say...