A cadet at The Citadel said he is being punished with 33 hours of marching after he revealed in a Facebook post that the school was considering allowing an incoming cadet to wear a hijab in uniform.
The cadet, senior political science student Nick Pinelli, said officials at the public military college originally sought to charge him with behavior “unbecoming to a cadet,” a Class I offense that can lead to dismissal under the school’s disciplinary code. Instead, he said the school reduced the charge to “gross poor judgment” and handed him the maximum punishment: 40 “tours,” each consisting of 50 minutes of silent marching with a rifle in a barracks quadrangle. Pinelli, who has also been working as an intern for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, must complete the tours before graduating on May 7.
