Rye Barcott, a 2001 UNC grad who lives in Charlotte, has a book out today, "It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace." Before his senior year at Chapel Hill, Barcott, who studied Swahili in college and was an ROTC student, traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, to research ethnic violence for his honors thesis. He lived in the Kibera slum, often described as the largest slum in Africa. There he met two people who became his colleagues and friends; the three of them started Carolina for Kibera, which, among other things, promotes youth leadership and ethnic and gender cooperation through sports. 

Pam Kelley, a reporter for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer, recently wrote about Barcott's journey. As he launched the program in Kibera with his two Kenyan colleagues, he also began his five-year stint in the Marines, which including serving in Iraq, Bosnia and the Horn of Africa.  Barcott writes about these two missions -- as warrior and peacemaker -- and how he was attracted to each.

Barcott is embarking on an international book tour that will take him from coast to coast in the United States and eventually to Africa. To see a trailer about the book, click here. Barcott, 32, will talk and sign books at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, on Wade Avenue, on Friday, April 22, at 7:30 p.m. --John Drescher

Big day today for Sara Isaacson. She's in Washington D.C., witnessing history.

Isaacson, 22, is the UNC-Chapel Hill student dismissed from the ROTC program earlier this year after letting her commander know she's a lesbian. Under the don't ask, don't tell policy, coming out forced her from the program.

But with President Obama's signing today of a repeal to that controversial legislation, Isaacson is looking once again at a military commission.

But as you'll read in today's story, this won't be a case of Isaacson simply picking up where she left off. Her dismissal has changed her, and not for the worse, she says.

Read on.

A UNC-Chapel Hill student dismissed from the university's ROTC program after revealing that she is a lesbian has a new ally in Congressman David Price.

Price, a North Carolina Democrat, has written to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asking for details on how many ROTC cadets have been dismissed under the controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Sara Isaacson, a UNC-CH senior from Wisconsin, was dismissed from the ROTC program earlier this year after telling her commander that she is a lesbian. In doing so, she is now on the hook for nearly $80,000 in tuition and other school costs she must pay back. The federal government had, for 3.5 years, been paying for her entire education, at out-of-state rates.

That doesn't sit well with Price, who penned the Gates letter with Congressional colleagues Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, and Tammy Baldwin, A Wisconsin Democrat.

"Requiring a graduating college student who has served with distinction to assume $80,000 in debt for revealing her sexual orientation does not strike us as humane," the letter states.

You can read more about Isaacson's case here.

And click the attachment below to read the letter Price, Weiner and Baldwin wrote to Gates.

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