Have you ever wondered about that strange little "ROT-CY" acronym (R.O.T.C.) you hear in high school and on almost all college campuses? 

Sounds kind of wimpy, effeminate, emasculated, degenerative, derogatory and stupid doesn't it?  I always thought so as a college student.  Well, I thought that way right up until that moment when I broke through the cream-puff veneer to find out what an amazing college leadership program ROTC really was. 

What kind of a funky word is a ROTC, and what is it all about?  The acronym and the Army thing?  It sure doesn't sound “Army Strong”!  Maybe it is from a different era, like way before “An Army of One” (which didn’t live long, because it also sold a pitiful message), ya reckon?

OK, so here is the deal.  Do you want to learn to LEAD a Nation, or lead an Army, or lead in Corporate America, or lead in Technology?  There is only one college course that teaches you hands-on, continuously-evaluated, professionally-instructed, time-proven LEADERSHIP, and that college class is Army ROTC.  When you pull out your college course book and choose your classes for next semester; choose Army ROTC, Leadership 101. It is right there before your eyes and ANY college student can sign up for the intro leadership classes: ANY STUDENT.

You don't have to sign any contract or belong to the Army: you just take an Army leadership class on your favorite college campus and say hello to a professor who shows up to teach you....who happens to be a senior Army sergeant, or an Army officer, in uniform.  So you take the class and decide you love being around all this Army leadership-introduction-thing, and you want to look deeper at learning leadership on your college campus (we are on 270+ major university campuses and over 1000 satellite surrounding campuses; so you can find Army ROTC everywhere if you google it!).  So you take an Army Leadership class each semester until you decide to go all-out and become an Army officer the day you graduate with whatever degree you are pursuing (absolutely any 4-year bachelor's degree), and join the National Guard, Army Reserve, or go onto Active Duty for 3-4 years or beyond.

As soon as you decide you want to become an officer in one of these three categories, then you sign a contract with the American Taxpayer via the US Army, and we pay you a monthly living stipend ($300 a month for freshmen, $350 for sophomores, $450 for juniors and $500 for seniors) and line you up for tuition, books and fees paid for by scholarship if you want it.  Then you are set to have college paid for and money in your pocket for pizza, and more time to focus on making good grades in school and graduating on time and at the top of your class.

If you are a graduate student, like I was when I finally peeled back that misleading "ROTC" poorly-branded facade and joined Army ROTC at the University of Texas in Austin, you can work a 2-year program where your 1st year of grad school is like being a junior in the standard program listed earlier.  In two years of grad school, you have your masters and your commission as an Army Leader/Officer, tuition, books and fees all paid by scholarship if you apply yourself. 

And you will have changed your whole life forever.  For then you will be a leader of men and women, no longer just a spectator or casual follower.  Leadership to better an organization or improve concepts and ideas, will now be in your soul.  For when you complete ROTC, you will know you were born to LEAD, for we will have found that spark within you and helped you discover and maximize it.

Many of our young female cadets and always a few of or male cadets start off in ROTC leadership classes with great hesitancy and timidity, not sure if they can cut it, or were "made for this officer, leadership thing".

And every single time, if they stick with it, they soar into leadership capacity and never look back on that frail, wavering, quivering thing they once were.  The Army ROTC program forges them into leaders they once could only dream of becoming.   Army ROTC opens the door to hard work at becoming an Army leader.  And with very rare exceptions, if you take the course and apply yourself, we find that leadership spark in all our college students and shape them to Lead for the rest of their lives, in or out of the military.

This is a photo of two of my senior cadets at The University of Texas-Pan American, in Edinburg, Texas. My Brigade Commander (tall guy on back row), Colonel Jim House, was there to announce that our Bronc Battalion had just won the MacArthur Award, as the  BEST ROTC PROGRAM IN THE USA, Small University Category.  Cadet Larry Ruiz and Cadet Cameron Anderson are pictured standing on both sides of our campus champion, University President, Dr. Blandina Cardenas, presenting her with our National #1 ranking and award.  I am pictured on the far left of the photo. 

Both of these young men took active-duty commissions as Army officers and then were off to active-duty training and ranger school, and platoon followed by company command and brilliant lives as leaders of soldiers.  They will go on to command divisions or Armies if they choose to stay the long-course, as they are that good.  But whenever they leave the Army, they will forever be formidable leaders in any path they then choose.  Army ROTC opened that door to Larry and Cameron, and it will to you as well.

So what about that goofy "R.O.T.C." acronym? 

Well, it stands for the Army's "Reserve Officer's Training Corps", and it is completely anachronistic (way out-dated in its incorrect, still-retained, 1950s name), as it once was the program used to commission  all our nation's Reserve officers.  But somewhere back in the 60's or 70's ROTC began commissioning more officers into the active duty than did West Point's Military Academy, and now for decades ROTC is the commissioning source for well over half of all our generals in the active Army as well!  It is not a “reserve” training program.  It is THE Premier officer training program of the United States of America.

So, why can't we change that silly ROTC title/name/mis-nomer?  Well, many of us have tried.  But like Don Quixote de la Mancha, Cervantes' infamous protagonist fighting his legendary windmill from the back of his little burro, we have not yet prevailed with the Army Leadership to see the wisdom of disassociating ourselves from this "reserve" classification and title, where ROTC training has become the life-blood commissioning source of even our very best Active Duty Officers.

Also confusing is that all across America, in some 3000+ high schools, there are "Junior" ROTC programs of Army, Navy, USMC and Air Force...also mistakenly called "ROT-CY" programs by their peers and the American people, filled with many youth who have no interest in the military nor will ever wear the uniform on active duty, but who join JUNIOR ROTC to learn better citizenship and have some great role-models and learn basics of leadership and self-discipline in their lives. 

ROT-CY in high school or ROT-CY on a college campus?  For America it is sadly confused as all being the same thing and is mocked and ridiculed because of the antiquitous title.

Junior ROTC adds to the name confusion.

If I had my vote, or was the Commander-in-Chief for the day, I would vaporize the "ROTC" acronym across Army, Navy and Air Force boundaries, and from all college campuses and call our Army Leadership Program the ARMY LEADERSHIP DEPARTMENT (ALD) on every college campus, and promote our new "Army Leadership" classes on every campus and invite students to "Sign up and Study Leadership", and away we'd go with an accurate new title for the best leadership courses taught on any college campus in the world.

And did I mention in the opening salvo of my blog, that the Army Leadership Department will pay  your tuition, fees and book costs and provide you a monthly living stipend, all compliments of our hard-working, Army-adoring US Taxpayers...even if you choose some ultra-costly Ivy-League Harvard kind of campus, and that campus accepts you?  Yep.  Even that Yale-priced, prima-donna ghastly tuition is fully covered, if you have the chutzpah to sign up and learn to Lead.

We'll see you in the classroom, after you do your homework and work out the scholarship application, fitness test, medical screening and the expressed passion to make a difference in this beautiful world and risk your life to make the world a better place because of you, and your brief but powerful, mortal life. 

And if you have had a run-in with the law, and you learned your hard lesson for jeuvenile stupidity, and did not go back down that dark path again; come see us and tell us where you are in life now and what you have learned from past mistakes, and what you intend to do to make something inspirational out of your life if you have turned that corner.  We do a full background investigation on you to get your mandatory officer's Secret Clearance, and if you misrepresented or concealed the truth when you applied to ROTC, we don't want your lying self, so head on back down your slippery road to ignominity and find a good rock to slide under for the rest of your pitiful adult life.  But if you step up, man-up, buck-up and have a new fire and accountability in your soul and we can see it in your eyes and feel it in your voice, we might just have an awesome new life for you in leading the greatest Soldiers of the greatest, freest nation in the history of the world. 

Step up and lead...and we'll teach you everything else you need to know about how to Lead a platoon, a company and eventually, a Nation.  Army Leadership Training, on almost every medium-large campus in the USA, is just waiting for you to get your dream paid for; then you'll gratefully give back from the richness of your newfound gifts and capacity to safeguard and bless all our lives. 

For you will have become a LEADER, an awesome American Leader, from that point forward.

It is your time to lead.