A university and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are investigating photos of military training instructors giving roses and making other expressions of love to female freshmen students, a local newspaper reported Monday.

The incidents happened at the Linyi Campus of the Qingdao University of Science and Technology, in eastern China’s Shandong province. Freshmen around the country spend the summer undergoing a 10-day military training course that teaches them marching, first-aid, military theory, and military songs.

The pictures, widely shared on social media, show instructors and students hugging on campus in full view of other students. One photo shows a group of students looking on as an instructor presents a bouquet of flowers to a female student.

Online, the young lovers were mostly criticized, but some expressed support. “It’s very good,” wrote one user of microblog platform Weibo. “Hardly ever could those young instructors meet girls in their life, and many girls like men in uniform.”

Huang Shanlu, a military officer based in Nanjing, told Sixth Tone that the instructors’ behavior “violates military regulations and discipline,” as PLA soldiers are not allowed to seek partners at the location where they are stationed.

According to the news report, the university said on Monday that it, together with the military, is investigating the incidents.

A former instructor who asked to remain anonymous told Sixth Tone that he had seen such cases happen before. “It’s normal for instructors to date university students, but not so brazenly,” he said. “Everyone knows that the only consequence of chasing students openly is undoubtedly ruining their own future.”

The instructor said that in his experience, PLA leaders are very concerned about intimacy between instructors and students. “They will educate the instructors all the time about relationships to ensure their thoughts are not divergent,” he said.

But the instructor doubted whether the people in the photos were real soldiers. “Military training is a high-profit activity nowadays that many companies are competing for,” he said. “All they have to do is buy a uniform.” Commenters online also questioned why the instructors in the photo didn't have badges on their clothes.

Flings between freshmen students and military instructors are a recurring news item each year. In 2015, a similar discussion broke out after a video surfaced of a military instructor at a school in Henan province, central China, kissing a female student.

According to an article in the PLA Daily, the military’s own newspaper, training instructors at Peking University in 2014 were given brochures about what was proper behavior around students. They said that military personnel should correct female students “by oral command,” keep a keep a 2-meter distance, and that they shouldn’t associate with them on their own or accept gifts.

A commentary published Tuesday in party-affiliated tabloid Beijing Times criticized the soldiers, saying that they should concentrate on military matters, politics, and culture, as well as being prepared for combat. The commentary wrote that their love “cannot be like normal people, uninhibited and as the heart desires.”

(Header image: A military instructor checks the posture of female students standing at attention at a college in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, Sept. 14, 2016. Fang Dongxu/VCG)