Earning Your Position

Each year I have JROTC cadets contact me about issues they see in their unit and how to address them. One of those issues is putting random cadets into different leadership positions like the guidon bearer for the class.

JROTC units have several classes throughout the day and each class is considered a company or squadron even though the numbers are only around 30. With that, the class/company is authorized a guidon and a cadet is chosen to be the guidon and guidon bearer. This position comes with responsibility and placing just anyone in the position can have certain consequences – positive and negative.

Below is the response I wrote to a cadet regarding a freshman cadet who, without any formal training for the position, decided she could tell the other class guidon bearers how to do their job.

The freshman needs to be counseled and politely put in her place. She needs to be trained in guidon manual, but before that she, along with the other guidon bearers, needs to go through a demonstration of all guidon manual positions, marching and static. Create a guidon manual sheet that has all commands on it and have all the guidon bearers go through the positions with a commander calling each command. For each command, it’s pass/fail. Any more than two failures on the sheet means immediate retraining. TC 3-21.5 standards only. When she (or any other) doesn’t pass that, and it sounds like she won’t, then any who did not pass need to be scheduled for training to EARN the privilege of carrying the guidon.

The training needs to happen at the beginning of each school year along with any other positions the leadership deems necessary.