There is nothing new in that article. It’s no more “real story” than any other piece about Ahmed with added bashing of those of us who think he was treated very badly - and stupidly.
I don’t know what schools you’re referring to, but that didn’t apply to the NYC public schools I attended, especially Stuyvesant.
Students at Stuy routinely were allowed to plug in electronic devices or charge electronics as that was part and parcel of running a STEM centered public magnet along with encouraging an educational atmosphere which encourages scientific and technical experimentation.
If Ahmed had brought that clock into Stuy, this wouldn’t have happened when I was there. Then again, what he did would be so commonplace that if there are Stuy parents like folks here arguing that Ahmed should be made an example of or the admins/cops did the right thing…they’d be rightly pilloried by most Stuy parents and especially alums for being anti-intellectual luddites who are reasons why our nation’s not doing well in K-12 education compared with other countries. And that’s if they felt like being restrained and polite in their responses…which many aren’t inclined to be considering most tend to not suffer fools very well.
Moreover, the reaction of the principal and the English teacher unfortunately fulfills the negative stereotypes of K-12 teachers…especially those in admin as folks who were academically subpar during their K-12/undergrad years commonly held not only by many HS classmates(a reason why most of the best and brightest HS classmates ruled out K-12 teaching*), but also stereotypes commonly held by graduate students in other divisions such as GSAS, medicine, law, etc.
Got to hear plenty in the latter context when visiting friends attending medical, law, and GSAS PhD programs in both STEM and non-STEM fields at a few elite Us including H. Moreover, the stereotype does have some truth to it considering one dormmate at my undergrad received a half-tuition scholarship to a top-3 graduate educational masters program despite graduating with a sub-3.0 and he wasn’t a URM or a lower income student and a former roommate who is an alum at the same top-3 educational grad program flat out admitted to me that there’s no way in h**l he’d be admitted to graduate programs in other divisions at that elite U given his sub 3.0 GPA and GRE scores well below 2000,
- Basically didn't like the odds of admins with far lesser academic achievement in HS/undergrad having so much power over them if they're teachers...especially considering the ridiculous levels of personal political drama among and between admins and teachers.
“what [Ahmed} did would be so commonplace that if there are Stuy parents like folks here arguing that Ahmed should be made an example of or the admins/cops did the right thing”
@cobrat, I too would have wanted my children to go to a high school that inspired, and encouraged, the kind of self-driven work Ahmed did. This whole incident illustrates so much that is just. plain. wrong. about our secondary education system.
What kind of ‘hoax bomb’ has no explosive component? Unless Ahmed discovered how to make air explode.
Don’t get all scientific on us, NoVADad99, you elitist you.
No problem w/ the concern by the teacher and school - it wouldn’t matter the ethnicity - it did look like a bomb. I don’t think an arrest in front of his classmates was called for, perhaps a walk to the office and discussion with the police. Suspension should be canceled but it is a good teaching lesson about not bringing anything to school that looks like a weapon (perhaps that is already in the code of conduct).
On another note, I read an article that said this was a clock that was taken apart and put into a box to look like he made a clock. I don’t know if that is true or not but if it is, that’s a pretty lame “invention” and using your ethnicity to set up a situation. This may be totally false but something I saw online.
I think someone should put that in their purse and then go on a White House tour…and then when stopped, ask the President to intervene.
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The attempts on this thread to fabricate a counterfactual narrative retrosopectively justifying the school and police behavior are strenuous!
Unfortunately for all of you engaged in such tortured efforts, you can’t get around the undeniable fact that nobody ever suspected for one second that it was an actual bomb, because the school wasn’t evacuated
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I think that many of us who understand why the school was concerned do recognize the strangeness that there was no evacuation.
But…after some thought…I’m thinking that they didn’t think THAT was a bomb…they thought it might be a non-explosive part that could be used to detonate a bomb. These people aren’t bomb experts…they didn’t know exactly what they were looking at…but knew enough that that alone couldn’t explode.
think if a student brought in a very large amount of nails for no apparent reason…alone the nails don’t require evacuation…but if there was a concern that the nails were going to be used in an easy-to-make nail bomb, then the student would be questioned.
So, if that was the case, then that’s why they didn’t feel the need to evacuate.
But…the police still went to far with the handcuffs and arrest.
I posit there is a difference between showing it to a teacher and attempting to sneak it into a federal building.
A gaping huge [expletive] difference.
Interesting video re Bill Maher’s show - the panel actually has a very good discussion about this. Even mark Cuban, a big lib, is skeptical re what is the whole story, after he talked to the kid.
It seems the problem arose that when asked directly the kid was not forthcoming for whatever reason. In either case, Bill Maher makes a great ( and funny) point about white privilege point between 4:45 - 5:05.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGit-XltUB4
It also seems that skepticism and punishment is a one-way street for the politically correct, as not a peep from the PC crowd about the below:
http://nypost.com/2015/09/19/how-ahmeds-clock-became-a-false-convenient-tale-of-racism/
"I posit there is a difference between showing it to a teacher and attempting to sneak it into a federal building.
A gaping huge [expletive] difference."
not at all! the school has an obligation just the same as a court or federal office to keep it’s occupants safe. so you are acknowledging the device looks suspicious and would not make it into a government office without the person being hog tied and dragged off and the building evacuated. so at the school level …a place full of students no precautions or response for the very same device would be warranted? I am confused.
I’m curious. I haven’t had any time to watch tv today. Have any of the adults involved in this story spoken out, in detail? The teachers, the principal, the police? Or is the entire story that’s out there based upon what “the victim” and his father have said, with a little amateur sleuthing and media speculation going on?
We all know how these stories evolve after more details are added. The first version put out there (particularly if completely one sided), can change entirely into something else, after everyone has their say.
First class of the day, he showed it to his science teacher. What hiding? What implied threat is there in that?
If the science teacher had found it threatening, maybe some of these posts would make sense. But in that context it does not.
He showed the clock to a teacher. He did that first. Blame that teacher if you think the response was appropriate - not the kid.
Smuggling is not the same thing as showing a project to a teacher.
“If the science teacher had found it threatening, maybe some of these posts would make sense. But in that context it does not.”
I thought it was his engineering teacher, who apparently found it concerning enough to tell him not to share it with other teachers. Is that incorrect? Of course, if this is merely the students version, who knows what really was said.
Overreaction.
I’m guessing that the engineering teacher wishes he had told him, “let me hold on to this and come back after school and get it to bring it home.”
If the school had used some sort of Zero Tolerance reasoning to suspend the student (like schools do for harmless water-squirt guns or even PICTURES of guns), instead of what they did do, would you all be fine with that?
Has the engineering teacher actually said what he told the student, or is this just what the student claimed?
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Have any of the adults involved in this story spoken out, in detail? The teachers, the principal, the police?
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Typically, school employees are told that they can’t discuss anything with the public in regards to a student. I imagine that the educators and the police have also been advised to say nothing…probably out of fear of a future lawsuit.
The police have spoken up. The police chief admitted that they knew the clock wasn’t a bomb before they arrested Ahmed, pointedly failed to apologize for the arrest, and asserted that it was legal to question a 14-year-old child without his parents present, even when the child asked for his parents.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/police-knew-pretty-quickly-clock-wasnt-bomb-527712323945
“My point as I expressed upthread is that the boy was not arrested because there was any immediate perceived threat. He was arrested because there is a statute in Texas prohibiting “hoax” bombs that could cause alarm. The boy was arrested so he could be questioned as to what his intent was in bringing the bomb to school.”
I have heard the same argument ad infinitum on right wing talk radio and bloviators on Fox News and the like, and it is a nonsensical argument, literally lacking merit. By the time the local cops were called in, it was apparent it wasn’t not only not a bomb, but they had the engineering teacher who know why the boy brought it, the cops were brought in a time lag after the kid showed it to the teacher…and they didn’t tell the cops what the engineering teacher had said? What kind of kid who wants to do a hoax with a bomb shows it to a teacher, and says it is a clock? If you are going to do a hoax, something you and the rest of those defending the school and cops refuse to answer, why would the boy show it to the teacher? Why would he show it to the engineering teacher? If he was going to do a hoax, he would take the device and leave it somewhere, your argument is plainly specious, the only thing sillier than that argument would be someone doing a hoax and showing the ‘device’ to a teacher (unless, of course, you are conjecturing the kid was pretending to be a suicide bomber, after all, we all know Muslims just love to do those kind of things…grrr).
The answer again is by the time the cops were called, there was no threat to safety, and more importantly it was patently obvious the kid did not intend it to be a hoax, both by his actions and what he told the engineering teacher…I don’t doubt this was meant to send a message, I am sure the principal and the cops had a nice long talk, and decided sending the kid off in handcuffs would be a message to ‘his kind’ that good Americans they are, that they won’t tolerate any of that from “them”…it was a tactic used against blacks in the day, and now that Muslims are a suspicious minority, it works for them, too. If this goes to trial, the principal and the cops will have to testify (I am talking a civil suit) and if they try and argue they were charging him for committing a hoax, it should be laughed at in court (though with a Texas jury, who knows). One of the amazing things is a commentators from across the spectrum are denouncing this, other than talk radio and maybe Fox news, conservatives through liberals have all denounced what the school and the cops did.
“The boy was a new freshman - at the school for about 4 weeks. What do the teachers really know about any child they have interacted with for 4 weeks? Nobody at that school could conclude with any certainty what the motive was without proper questioning of the student. I have no problem whatsoever with the police being notified to conduct that questioning.”
Really? Why? Whether the kid was there 4 weeks or 3 years, they had the testimony of the engineering teacher, and they had the english teacher saying the kid said it was a clock. If they had caught the kid with the device in his backpack, if he hadn’t shown it to the first teacher, if he hadn’t said it was a clock, I could buy the argument they weren’t sure, if the kid refused to talk, then maybe, just maybe, you would be right. But given the facts of this case, what they did for sure know, the only answer as to why they did what they did was because despite everything, they saw he was Muslim and assumed he was up to no good, they assumed ill intent automatically simply because of who he was. If it was a white kid, and they had the kind of information they did, they probably would give the kid the benefit of the doubt, but they assumed ill intent because he was Muslim, that much I am sure of. It was prudent to check the device out, though if they ever assumed it was a bomb they weren’t, since they didn’t evacuate the school and they called the cops more than a hour later, and if they assumed it was a hoax, it should have been dissuaded by what the kid said and what the first teacher said.
Timothy McVeigh, Kazcinsky, really? You mention them when you ask who they are sending a message to? Again, you contradict yourself, those men committed real acts of violence and deaths, yet the kid in question according to you was involved with a hoax, there is a big difference. Among other things, someone like them would not be impressed by a 14 year old being arrested for having a clock like device, they would think “Gee, they arrestd a 14 year old for that, I better not do this”…all of them knew they were killing people, and that they would face stiff penalties if caught, mcVeigh knew he could be put to death, as did Kascinsky, and they didn’t care. When people are dedicated to killing people, when they are set in that, the deterrent effect of this story is laughable
Why is it you keep going on about a device being taken into a court room, and how would we want them not to react. No one was questioning whether the school didn’t have a right to be concerned, to check it out, but it was the reaction downstream that is the problem. First of all, if you really think their reaction was justified, if you are claiming they had reason to think it was a bomb, why did they not evacuate the building? If someone was caught bringing a clock like device into a building, they would likely evacuate the building as a precaution in case others had been planted. The school didn’t do this, which means they knew from the beginning this was not a bomb, that at most it could be a hoax.
And like others have written, the claim the reaction was for the kid trying to perpetuate a hoax falls on its own weight, nothing that has been mentioned shows anything that would make sense as a hoax, even to Texas where morning breakfast often appears to be loco weed or something. The kids actions make no sense as a hoax, if it were a hoax, the kid would have left the device someplace public and watch as everyone panics, you don’t commit a hoax by showing it to a teacher and saying what it is.
As far as those saying school overreaction is common, with stories of the girl chastised for saying ‘bless you’ or a kid suspended for writing about shooting dinosaurs with a gun, it is trying to compare apples and oranges, as stupid as those things probably are. Schools with their zero tolerance and such have gone overboard (and for the record the teacher chastizing the kid for saying ‘bless you’ could face censure, if that is a public school that would be a violation of student’s rights, as well as stupid, rulings on faith in public school don’t allow that kind of thing, unless it was some born again Christian kid telling someone they were going to hell or calling someone a f*g or something). However, there is a fundamental difference, the boy who was suspended for writing about shooting a dinosaur was suspended from school, the kid in this case was arrested and taken away in handcuffs. If the school had suspended the kid it wouldn’t have been as big a deal, but arresting the kid, when it was clear the kid had no intent, was nothing more than racial bias, they arrested him, to quote @harvestmoon1, to set an example to “them” (where it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who the ‘them’ is) (and I am not implying harvestmoon meant it that way, I take his comment as being about deterring hoaxes and such in general), what it comes off as is the old “uppity” crap they used to do during Jim crowe, show ‘them’ that ‘they’ better toe the line.