I am not trying to justify the incident by no means but to clarify some of what has been posted...
Clearly, these young men are nowhere near mature enough to be junior officers in the US military.
The Citadel is considered The Military School of South Carolina but is a public college and not a Military College. More enter into civilian life than the military. So none of the pictured may be striving to enter the military as Junior Officers. I have no clue...
Presumably the cadets involved shared it with someone outside the school. How else would it have ended up on Facebook?
It is called social media and exist in so many forms that I admit I am totally ignorant about. The reports are the Cadets did not share the picture. There was a female involved, my understanding a non-cadet, and due to some other circumstances, found the picture on a form of social media linked to a cadet. The circumstances of that are a whole different issue. She decided to post the picture on facebook. She was contacted and asked to take it down and did. And then decided again, she thought it needed to be seen and share it Wednesday . Claims she woke up Thursday and it had gone viral and started a firestorm, imagine that??? (All this info can be found in news reports)
The media keeps hammering a 30 year old case. And then they throw in that MOVIE/BOOK... Hopefully we have all matured in 30 years....
I agree, bonehead, stupid decision they made. I have kinda heard about an upperclassmen referred to in the picture. I agree, looks like a very old upperclassman. IMHO, which means very little, I don't see this fairing well for the Cadets involved, in particular the upperclassman....Hopefully all get the chance to make this right, and learn from the experience...