The Badge and The Burden

"The Badge and The Burden" is the ninth episode of RWBY, which premiered on the Rooster Teeth website on September 12th, 2013.

Summary
The morning after their initiation, Weiss Schnee wakes up to Ruby Rose blowing a whistle in her ear and finds the others are already dressed in the academy uniforms. Ruby declares as leader that the team's first order of business is to decorate and, as Blake Belladonna suggests, clean their dorm. Each of them arrange their belongings in the room, doing things such as hanging posters and paintings and storing books. Ruby accidentally slashes a curtain with Crescent Rose that the team then mends shortly after.

Soon, they realize that the beds cannot really fit side-by-side in the room with all their stuff. Ruby then proposes a solution: the beds should be redesigned as bunk beds. All except Weiss are in favor of the proposal, outvoting her in the decision.

Ruby then states their next order of business is class, prompting Weiss to realize that class is already about to start. They then rush out of the room to their first class, with Team JNPR seeing them leave from across the hall and also realizing they need to get to class. Glynda Goodwitch and Ozpin watch the two teams rushing through the campus.

In one of their classes, Team RWBY is in lectured by Peter Port. He gives the students a long-winded lecture about the purpose of the class, how Vale and the other 3 kingdoms provide safe havens from the Grimm, and the purpose of being Huntsmen. He then tells a long, self-absorbed and purposeless story about himself and his experience capturing a live Beowolf as a boy.

During this story, Weiss becomes infuriated as she notices Ruby's inattentive, disrespectful, and rude behavior, which includes doodling a mocking picture of Professor Port, dubbed: "Professor Poop," balancing all her school materials, and picking her nose. As Port asks the class who possesses the traits required of being a Huntsman/Huntress, Weiss raises her hand and proclaims that she does. However, in order to prove this, Peter Port tells her that she must step forward to fight a Grimm that he has locked in a cage, as a test.

Trivia

 * Team JNPR appear to share a room together even though there are two boys and two girls.
 * Early in the episode, a poster of the "Achieve Men" can be seen on the wall. This is a reference to Rooster Teeth's gaming members called the Achievement Hunters.
 * This also references Geoff Ramsey's original name for the website which would have been "Achieve Men."
 * The poster and poses are from the "Boy Band" poster that is sold on Rooster Teeth's online store.
 * However, there is another poster titled "achieveMEN: UNLOCKED" that has frequently been seen as a wallpaper on the Achievement Hunters' monitors.
 * Among the items Yang is carrying from 0:57-1:04 are items belonging to several other characters, namely Ruby's headphones and corgi dog pillow, Pyrrha's shield Akoúo̱ (albeit smaller), Nora's hairbrush, the candles Blake used in "The Shining Beacon, Pt.2," Weiss' "Dust For Dummies" pamphlet (and perhaps her Red Forest painting, unconfirmed), and white queen and black knight chess pieces (possibly given to her by her 'friends').
 * Among the things that fall out of Blake's suitcase, a Shi-nee Toothpaste container is seen.
 * The student who shouts "EEEE-YUUP!" in the classroom is a reference to Andrew Blanchard's catchphrase from the Internet Box Podcast, which several cast and crew members of RWBY also work on. However, the voice was provided by Kerry Shawcross.
 * The line "Despite smelling of cabbages, my grandfather was a wise man" could be a reference to the unnamed Cabbage Merchant character of the fellow American anime Avatar: The Last Airbender and its successor The Legend of Korra, which premiered its second "Book" the day after this episode's release.
 * This episode revealed the regular attire of Beacon Academy, in which it is required for the students to wear uniforms.
 * Some viewers have compared the music played as the Professor tells his story to the leitmotif from "Peter and the Wolf," also the story of a boy named Peter who brought a wolf as a prisoner back to his home-town.
 * The shouted line "Banzai!" followed by Ruby, Blake, and Yang turning at an angle on their hips with their arms held high (followed by a musical "whump" noise) is a reference to Samurai Champloo, when the main characters did the same thing after finding a bag of gold in the river.