In an essay for a college English class, Charles Whittington Jr. opened up about his feelings about his time in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

‘Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive. I had a really hard time with this problem when I returned to the United States, because turning this addiction off was impossible,’ Whittington wrote in the essay for his class at the Community College of Baltimore County in Catonsville, Md.

‘I wrote this essay and the teacher gave me an A for it, and she encouraged me to publish it in the school newspaper,’ Whittington said. ‘Two weeks later, it was published.’

After reading it, college administrators called Whittington into a meeting.

‘They said he’s barred until he gets a psychological evaluation,’ said Deborah O’Doherty, president of the Maryland chapter of American War Mothers and a friend of Whittington’s family. She attended the meeting with Whittington. ‘They also gave him a no-trespass notice and kept bringing up the Virginia Tech shooting.’

‘I was really frustrated, because they didn’t give me a chance to explain,’ said Whittington. ‘I wrote the paper to talk about the reality of what other soldiers go through and it was therapeutic for me.’

Hope Davis, a college […]