One thing that people haven't been pointing out enough is that the administrators didn't make the mistake when they questioned Ahmed about this device. If there's even the smallest chance that it could cause harm, they need to investigate. What they did wrong is everything after they learned that it wasn't harmful or anything resembling a weapon. They should have apologized and then sent him on his merry way. Instead, they're doubling down on this "no tolerance" BS and taking it out on a kid who has done nothing to deserve it. It's ridiculous. /endrant
School administrators should investigate whenever there's the slightest bit of harm? That would be an awful allocation of resources, only made wise because of fear of lawsuit. It would also be a theatrical exercise in neuroticism.
Sounds like schools should appropriate part of their budget for threat consultation.
I think you're not appreciating that most people don't know anything about electronics. So a bunch of wires and LEDs does in fact look very scary from their perspective, and you know.. better be safe than sorry.
Would it have been better if the school staff were all familiar with electronics projects? Sure.. but that's not the reality we live in
Well, then, why not consult a subject matter expert? They didn't ask his teacher or any of his potentially qualified colleagues; the police didn't consult anyone on their staff who might have been as knowledgeable. They didn't even try their bomb squad. There's no suggestion that even a semblance of a credible investigation took place.
Why should school policy be driven by how scared somebody gets, as opposed to statistics? If I look more into how scared people get by LEDs and wires, will I understand how staff attention and resources should be allocated to investigating any potential threat, no matter how small?
It doesn't take a subject matter expert to realize that electronics not attached to an explosive of some kind are just electronics, if all you see is a clock, then its just a clock.
If you think that is an "awful allocation of resources" I have to ask if you have ever attended a public school in America. My old highschool had an on-staff copy lady who would take 3hr lunch breaks. Her job was 100% useless because every room had a printer. All they needed was ink and paper.
Part of the problem is Hollywood's reliance on tropes like the beeping timebomb with bright red LED countdowns and scary-looking wires, and then people judging reality based on what they see on 24 and CSI.
> If there's even the smallest chance that it could cause harm, they need to investigate.
What?! That's just fundamentally mislead as to the nature of life. Everything has the possibility to cause harm. Absolute harm reduction is horribly mislead and will be used to end anything like freedom. This is not the answer!
How small of a chance are talking about? 1 in a hundred? 1in a billion? 1 in a billion billion? The backpack the clock was in can do more harm, yet it wasn't investigated.
This was made very clear to me when I went to high school (from 2004-2009). If you had a gun, or a toy gun, or two pieces of wood nailed at a right angle and held like a gun, and you so much as brought it onto the school grounds, you would be handed over to the police and recommended for expulsion.
I'm 100% sure that next week, at least one high school kid will be expelled for something like this. It won't make the news, because there won't be a fleet of outraged tumblr users to champion the kid, because he won't have a name like Ahmed Mohammed. Probably he'll be black, because hey, school to prison pipeline has to pump, but he could just as easily be white.
It's not like the school administrators have any leeway in enforcing district policy. The principal would get fired if he just went "Well, you brought something that we have to expel you for, but you're a good kid, don't do it again." That's how you get favoritism and corruption and it's not something we should try to encourage.
Instead, we should attack the actual problem here, which is the zero tolerance policy. You can't get Donald Trump soundbytes about zero tolerance policies, but that's the actual problem.
I doubt they acted outside of there authority under the law. That does not mean the post 911 paranoia is reasonable, but the root problem is the Patriot Act style legislation. Administrators, Judges and Police have to fallow the law whether it makes sense or not there is just as big a chance the administrators get a lawsuit from over protective paranoid parents then the reverse.
The authors trying to shoehorn this story into identity politics is unfortunately predicable click bait at this point. It just detracts form the actual issue which is overboard paranoid legislation which makes these incidents more likely.
