Every Thursday AFJROTC students are required to wear their uniforms to school for thorough inspections down to their sock-color to instill discipline in them.

While these Thursday check-ups happen every year,  in some years known as inspection year, they are more important than others, said Melody Hollenbeck, freshman.

2017 was an inspection year for MHS’ JROTC.

“They have the inspection only like every three years so that was just kind of like the one perk of this year,” Hollenbeck said.

In an inspection year, one of the heads from the AFJROTC center goes to different schools in their assigned district to inspect the JROTC programs, Rami Safi, senior, said.

“You have someone who comes in and they inspect how well you’re maintaining your program,” Safi said. “If you don’t maintain your program properly you can be re-evaluated, or your program can be shut down.”

The preparations for the inspection began in January. All items need to be accounted for and the cadets have to perform a 30-man drill sequence. They also are responsible for leading a briefing, Safi said.

They are graded in 54 different areas on a four-tier system of exceeds standards, meets standards, meets standards with discrepancies, and fail. MHS’ ROTC received exceeds expectations in 13 different categories.

Safi said this rating was because of the extra work the students put in.

“Basically meeting standards is doing the bare minimum. We did a little bit more than that,” Safi said. “For example, in our drill sequence, we did it with little to no mistakes. When our briefing was conducted, we had extra information on the slides that wasn’t necessary and our presenters for it were really good.”

The only issue they faced was some mixed up papers, Safi said.

Dr. Gary A Wamble, SMSgt, USAF, Aerospace Science Instructor, one of the class’ teachers who has taught for nine years, said he was very proud of their achievement.

“It’s really hard to get an exceeds because that rating normally goes to bigger units that have very few, if any discrepancies,” Wamble said.

The last two inspections the AFJROTC program yielded the meets standard grade. This year they were graded with 13 exceeds standards, 38 meets standards and three minor administrative discrepancies.  MHS’ ROTC excelled in their cadet presentation and extra-curricular activities inside and outside of school, Wamble said.

Wamble said he was very proud to see the cadets perform at such high levels in the inspection.

“In AFJROTC, our mission is to develop better citizens for America and when they graduate Marquette High School, they will not only be better prepared for life, but also when I see our cadets performing at these levels during our inspection as high school students, that tells me that they will be successful in life,” Wamble said. “That’s our direction in AFJROTC at MHS.  We teach Leadership, Discipline, Respect and the drive to succeed.”