In the spring of 2025, I taught a unique course in the Honors Program at Western Oregon University called “UFOs: Government Officials Go on the Record.” While the topic raised some eyebrows from skeptical colleagues and administrators, the class was a smash hit with the 18 students who participated. Looking back, our time together was filled with unforgettable moments: We marveled at the fantastic images being sent back from the James Webb Space Telescope, had mind-expanding discussions about our small place in the vast cosmos, and took time to appreciate the breathtaking beauty of life on this pale blue dot called Earth.

In one memorable class we had a guest speaker who recounted how, as a teenager in the Belgian city of Leuven, she saw a triangular craft with glowing red lights hover outside her bedroom window during the legendary 1989 “Belgian Wave” of UFO sightings. On another occasion a local ufologist came and talked with great excitement about what UFO research means for the evolution of human consciousness. But the undisputed highlight was when we piled into a university van and took a field trip to the annual UFO Festival in nearby McMinnville, Oregon, where we watched a documentary film about the 1950 Trent Family UFO sighting and spent the day with costume-clad enthusiasts from all over the country.

Toward the end of the course, I asked the students if they cared to contribute some of their work in order to create an open education resource on UFOs. Those who took me up on the offer donated their papers, which are collected here and offer a sampling of the subjects that we examined during the 11-week spring quarter. To my mind, these writings represent the enormous interest that young people have in Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs), which are now collectively called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs).

In the meantime, much has happened in the UFO disclosure movement. High-ranking government officials have acknowledged that there are unknown objects flying around in our skies and that they may be otherworldly. Navy pilots are talking openly about seeing mysterious phenomena that defy the laws of physics. The U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense has an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office and the U.S. Department of War is cautiously releasing UAP videos and documents. Films like Dan Farah’s The Age of Disclosure and Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day have reached mainstream audiences. Indeed, it appears to be a significant point in human history—one in which we are taking UFOs more seriously than ever before and realizing that we are not alone in the universe.

— Eliot Dickinson, Monmouth, Oregon, 12 June 2026