Students scurrying across Red Square for late afternoon classes yesterday may have had to skirt around students with rifles. The gun-toting students were members of the UW ROTC Detachment 910 drill team.

Dozens of ROTC students stood in pressed, formal uniforms in Red Square for their Joint Service Review, which is an annual event bringing together Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines cadets and veterans.

Awards were presented to ROTC members, and a retired brigadier general spoke to the assembled cadets. The event was also a time to reflect before Memorial Day, said Capt. Brett Rubio, an assistant professor of military science at the UW.

Several of the cadets at the ceremony expressed their desire to enter active duty, and many had familial military ties.

Cadet Ryan Huntoon, a senior, came to the UW from Pennsylvania with his brother for the University’s crew team. He is planning to enter active duty after graduating and has been assigned a station in Fort Hood, Texas. His brother is in Iraq.

Graduating cadets from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps ROTC can also choose to go into the reserves.

“They get to put in a wish list for what job specialty they want to go into,” Rubio said.

But the military controls the final assignment decision. For some, that decision is a couple of years away.

Michelle Lee, whose grandfather and father were also in the army, is a sophomore in the Army ROTC. She said being a woman in the ROTC program can be physically and mentally challenging.

“When you’re doing physical training, they don’t lower the standard for girls,” she said.

She wants to be an active duty medic when she graduates.

Though there are still campus groups who formally oppose the war in Iraq, there were no protests against the military or the war at the formal review.

The group Washington Huskies Against Millitary Occupation, a University Registered Student Organization spearheaded by an Iraq war veteran, is now mostly inactive. Members of the group, including senior Jack Range, continue to hold anti-war views.

Range wants the United States out of Iraq because he said the conflict serves private interests such Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton.

“There is a huge apathy at the UW,” Range said when asked about Iraq War protests.

Vietnam anti-war protests tended to be larger and sometimes more violent. In 1968 the UW’s ROTC was the target, when their headquarters at Clark Hall were firebombed.

But the activism landscape seems to have changed.

“I know a lot activists on campus who think protests are completely stupid,” Range said.

Many groups prefer to work with the administration at the University to push for changes, he said.