Jophiel wrote:
I like the links Gbaji picked out. Starting with the second, two girls were arrested for putting an alarm clock into an empty locker with the intent to scare people. But it's the second half that matters: they admitted to trying to scare people.
No. It was a prank. They weren't trying to scare people, and didn't think for a second anyone would think there was a bomb. What they were trying to do was have alarm clocks randomly going off in closed off lockers, so that the staff would be wondering where these ringing noises were coming from.
The point being that just because you don't think something you did might be interpreted as a potential danger doesn't mean that someone else might.
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That's the crieria for a "hoax bomb" that Gbaji keeps missing.
No. Because real bombs don't normally ring like alarm clocks, and upon opening the locker, clearly no one would mistake a non-modified off the shelf alarm clock for a bomb. Yet, they were arrested anyway. For devices that were remarkably less bomb like than the one this kid made. I'm countering the argument that his device didn't look enough like a real bomb to qualify by showing you cases of other devices that didn't look at all like a real bomb, but were still treated seriously by the school staff.
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In the former, a school was evacuated because a student left a lunchbox sitting unattended. That was it. It didn't have a clock in it, or a bomb, we don't even know if it had a lunch in it. Someone saw a lonely lunchbox, panicked and called the bomb squad.
Yup. Again, the point is to get you to realize that something far less bomb like than what this kid made could be mistaken for a bomb, resulting in evacuation of the school, and calling of the bomb squad. So saying "but it doesn't look like a real bomb" is clearly not a counter. He took something that was far far more likely to be mistaken for a bomb than either of these other two cases. So an off the shelf alarm clock or a school lunch box being mistaken for bombs is not an indication of profiling, but a clock deliberately taken apart and its components shifted around and wired up by hand inside a case is?
Complain about zero tolerance if you want, but don't pretend that he was somehow singled out. Kids have been arrested and suspended for far less than what he did.
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Gbaji managed to find two stories that don't cover this event at all. In one, some girls acted with clear and admitted intent, but Ahmed never did.
Intent to commit a prank using alarm clocks, not to planting false bombs. That's a key point you're overlooking. Just as Ahmed's admitted intent was to bring a taken apart clock to school inside a case. That his intent wasn't for others to think what he did could be dangerous (or mistaken for being dangerous) isn't the point. The girls in question never thought anyone would think the clocks were dangerous, just as Ahmed didn't think anyone would think his clock was dangerous.
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In the other, people legitimately thought an object was dangerous but no one ever thought that of Ahmed's clock.
Only because Ahmed was right there, holding the clock and telling the teacher "it's a clock". If he had left that unattended, just like with the alarm clocks in the lockers, or the lunch box (I'm guessing it was an odd looking lunch box and not some Dukes of Hazard style thing), his "clock" absolutely would have been assumed to be the bomb that it looked like, and the school would have been evacuated. That's the point. He should not bring such a thing to school precisely because if he leaves it somewhere, it'll be mistaken for a bomb. If someone sees it in his pack, it'll be mistaken for a bomb. If someone sees it in his locker, it'll be mistaken for a bomb.
The pattern here is that kids often fail to consider how others will perceive their actions, and this can on occasion run afoul of our zero tolerance rules for schools. Again, complain about those rules if you want, but don't try to pretend that he was singled out or profiled. Any kid doing the same thing he did would have gotten the same outcome. Well, except for the invite to the White House, and massive outpouring of support. That only happens when the kid involved happens to align with some protected identity class the left has chosen to care about.
The discrimination and bias (once again) is coming from those claiming discrimination and bias. Sadly, because of such a strong knee jerk reaction to this, it's now become "circle the wagons" for those who had that initial reaction. No one wants to admit that they were wrong, much less that they got played, so they up the ante and deny, deny, deny. It's almost comical at this point.
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Mash them together and you get.... well, nothing that remotely relates to Ahmed's circumstances except for him being arrested.
And this is desperate circling of the wagons. Nothing remotely relates? Really? Um... Except that in those other cases, the kids who did what they did *also* didn't think anyone would think it was dangerous (or a bomb). That's a pretty huge commonality, don't you think?