NJROTC is having an annual military inspection during first and second period on Thursday, Nov. 17. The cadets will be inspected on their uniforms and evaluated on their ability to march together as units rather than sole individuals.

The overall goal is for NJROTC to be inspected by military personnel to determine whether the school gets to keep the program.

“We practice our drills every Monday and Wednesday and make sure our cadets are prepared,” senior cadet lieutenant Peng Thang said. “It’s about how our unit is doing, so basically there is an area ten manager named Commander Mike Hale who is coming to inspect us. This inspection is important because if we do poorly then Commander Hale will discontinue our unit.”

The amount of time and effort put into the practice requires discipline and motivation, which will both be measured at the inspection. The units have been practicing for about two months.

“We’ve done a lot of drills to make sure cadets know what to do when specific commands are given and we’ve studied our general orders and chain of command,” sophomore cadet seaman Ashminie Ganesh said.

The success of this meet depends on the cadets abilities to perform as a team, however, severe consequences can affect the program if they don’t do well.

“If we do bad enough we can get shut down entirely and our instructors could lose their jobs,” senior cadet lieutenant Jonathan Salas said. “We risk having ROTC canceled as a program until somebody wants to restart it and they can prove that it’ll be different than the last time.”

On the positive side, if the cadets do well then they can be recognized with medals.

“If we’re deemed good enough, we as a unit can accomplish the district award of distinguished unit which means our unit has gone above and beyond,” Salas said. “For individuals, some cadets receive medals if their appearance was exceptional.”