Saturday, when many students were waking up to tailgate for the Eastern Michigan game, more than a hundred ROTC cadets were gathered at Fort Custer Saturday for their second day of a weekend-long training exercise.
MSU’s Spartan Battalion, along with cadets from Eastern Michigan University and Bowling Green State University, covered a variety of subjects, including survival skills and marksmanship. The exercises are held once a semester.
Cadet and accounting senior Sean Woods is the battalion’s public relations officer and said cadets are given a specific type of weapon and train exclusively with it for the weekend. At the first station, the sights on the rifles are fitted to each particular cadet. At the station, cadets also receive a gun safety course.
“The sights on an M16 are going to be set up for different angles based on your facial structure,” Woods said. “So everyone is going to have a different sight picture.”
He went on to say that a tool is used to adjust the sight after three rounds are fired.
“For the freshmen, this is the first time some of them have ever shot a weapon in their life,” Woods said. “So they are really learning a lot.”
Woods said the battalion has reached out to the community in several ways, including a blood drive with MSU’s greek community.
Woods said although the main activity of the day was marksmanship, cadets also participate in a field craft course, which included survival skills, and a hand grenade assault course.
Cadet Andrew Cross, an agricultural business senior, was in charge of the field survival course.
“Field craft is when we have very little resources to work with. You can basically build these with your hands,” Cross said, referring to the A-frame shelters the cadets had made out of fallen trees and debris. “It’s just a shelter to keep you out of the cold, keep you dry, keep you off the ground, and we position them in such a way we can still maintain concealment.”
The Ranger Challenge team, a squad which cadets volunteer and audition for, trained separately near the hand grade assault course.
Those selected to be on the team participate in a competition in Fort Knox, Ky. Woods said the competition includes a rope walk, a shooting portion, a land navigation portion, a weighted run, emergency combat first aid and some problems requiring logical reasoning.
The winner of the competition moves on to compete in the Sandhurst competition at the United States Military Academy at West Point in West Point, NY. Last year, the team from MSU earned a spot at West Point.
Cross also said they discuss important subjects such as how to identify differences between harmless and dangerous plants.
Lt. Col. Jeff Winston, a professor of military science, oversees the soldiers that train MSU’s cadets. After graduation, ROTC members hope to serve as commissioned officers.
Winston said there are currently 95 of the 200 cadets on full scholarship through ROTC, 15 of them freshmen.
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