How can I help raise morale in my unit?

Your question is vague and open ended hence you have received some simple one dimensional answers. First, foremost to solve any problem you need to identify the root causes to it. Why is morale in your unit poor? Does your unit have a leadership issue? How are the cadets treated in your unit? Does the leadership both cadet and cadre treat the lower echelons like garbage? Are people not being taken care of? Does your unit have cliques where only the cool kids advance if you are not in the group you are marginalized? These are the things that you need to find out. I can gander a simple guess on my experiences on why an ROTC unit starts to falter.

When I was in ROTC the one morale killer was when the Cadet Leadership and officer staff forgot that our primary responsibility is school first the unit is a close second. If unit activities start interfering in school studies than that caused a lot of consternation. Its a fine balance to make activities to bolster team building and unit cohesion to going over board. Not everyone is on the schedules or has the same academic load. Someone doing 15 credit hours in basket weaving may have more time on their hands to do extra stuff compared to the engineering student doing 18 credit hours and is staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning. Some people are holding jobs to offset the cost of school, that gets overlooked a lot. Those are some considerations. Obviously there are mandatory requirements that are prescribed by your cadet command those you have to work around or get the hell out.

When I was a cadet wing commander how did I solve these things? First, with my staff we secured money from the school student union to create a study lab with updated computers where people could do work in between ROTC and other classes in our building. We also put in a morale room got funds for a pool table and a TV/AV system. We held movie nights and pool tournaments. These were completely voluntary. Small things like that help to get the unit together. Not saying you have figure out how to do these things exactly but there are ways to get people together.

How do you mitigate problems in morale? Have unit study sessions. Do activities outside the unit that have nothing to do with ROTC. Sometimes its best to close the "Hangar Doors, stop the shop talk and get to know each other out of uniform. If you can build on the interpersonal relationships and make it a comfortable environment where everyone feels included than your morale will go up. There are some things out of your control, like if you have a toxic cadet staff or officer leadership. But in the scope you can manage you can at least make a difference in your span of control.

I am shooting dark, but if I have come close those are some of the things to consider.

DO something fun like coordinate an obstacle course run together (tough mudder, spartan, etc). Talk to your Det leadership and see if you can get it to count for a PT session. You can also train together to prep for it, and plan a cookout for afterwords. Or you could look up a local Fisher House and go cook for them. I took my flight there every summer to cook. The families at Fisher House loved it!

If your dead in morality, maybe you all should not be in ROTC. However, I hope you mean morale. If that is the case, dive through the history of your Det! Look for the heroes that have come before. Make it a competition to find the most decorated alum!