On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 6:53 AM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
But this is a technical school with a staff trained in science and > electronics! Any one of them could have glanced at the gadget and seen it > was a clock. Even I can tell, and I am no expert in electronics or > explosives. > It's obviously a clock. But it looks a lot like a clock designed to look like a bomb. I suspect that was intentional. Mohamed might of thought it was cool, like something from Mission Impossible. I definitely would at his age. You have a kid that brings something that looks like the beginnings of a stage prop for Mission Impossible to school. There's about an 80 percent chance the kid knew that it looked like a stage prop from Mission Impossible, despite assurances that it's just a clock. Make him a white kid from a family of atheists instead of a brown Muslim kid. These questions come up regardless: - What's he going to do with the thing? Is it just a cool prop? - Is he going to pull a prank with it? - Is it the precursor of something worse? Coming from Colorado, where we had the Columbine massacre, my feeling is that you keep an eye on this kind of thing. The school showed exceptionally bad judgment in how it handled this situation, and the mayor of the city set the stage with his Islamophobia. But Mohamed showed poor judgment in bringing the thing to school as well. Eric