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#Ahmed

VegasBella

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If you've been paying attention to the news you know this already, but for those who don't watch the news...

A freshman in high school wearing a NASA tshirt who had built a clock for an engineering class was arrested under the WRONG assumption the clock was a bomb. His name is Ahmed and now #Ahmed is trending as a pro-science, pro-engineering tag on twitter.

Here's one of the news stories about it: http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/
 

Patri

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President Obama has invited him to the White House, but I am pretty sure if Ahmed was standing in line to visit, the Secret Service would have been all over that device. He also did not build it for the class, but on his own. He was bringing it to school to show the teacher.
Would it have been okay if the school made the RIGHT assumption, as could have been the case with another student? Everyone needs to calm down.
 
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DaveNV

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I won't comment on the politics of the situation, but I would like to commend the young man on his intelligence and ingenuity. If he stays with it, he'll have a bright future career. Counting POTUS and Mark Zuckerberg among your fans can't be a bad thing, for a 14 year old. :)

Dave
 

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Thumbs up to Ahmed. Thumbs down to his school.

It was sort of understandable for the teacher to raise the alarm when the alarm clock- that was after all just a circuit board with wires hanging loose off it- sounded the alarm.

What was inexcusable was the lack of apology by the teacher/principal/police after the clock was deemed harmless. They doubled down on their actions being from 'an abundance of caution'. Bull! When you overreact, have the guts to admit it.

Jim
 

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I once had a student who was in a school play, who accidentally come to class with a starter's pistol in his duffle bag from the previous night's rehearsal. He came to me with a stricken look on his face when he realized it was still in the bag. I discreetly locked it in my desk, and called security. They came and got it after class, and the whole thing was handled very quietly.
 
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As an officer of the court, I cannot understand why they cuffed this kid.












-
 

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It was sort of understandable for the teacher to raise the alarm when the alarm clock- that was after all just a circuit board with wires hanging loose off it- sounded the alarm.

What was inexcusable was the lack of apology by the teacher/principal/police after the clock was deemed harmless. They doubled down on their actions being from 'an abundance of caution'. Bull! When you overreact, have the guts to admit it.

Jim

I would agree entirely!
 

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How much intelligence was required to discern that it wasn't an explosive device? :rolleyes:
 

heathpack

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As an officer of the court, I cannot understand why they cuffed this kid.












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That is 100% my problem with this as well. And additionally cuffed him in a location such that his sister was able to take a picture of the situation. Take the kid to the principal's office, lock the door, have someone sit with him. But handcuffs on a 14 year old boy seems over the top.
 

VegasBella

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How much intelligence was required to discern that it wasn't an explosive device? :rolleyes:

That's my thought. So it's a timer... but timer doesn't equal bomb. What about it looked explosive? I mean, seriously?
 

visor

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Some people have been watching too many Mission Impossible movies... ;)
 

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eh, were talking about a grade school here...far worse has happened to kids for far less in the past few years (what about the kid that got suspended for eating his pop tart in the shape of a gun).

while one can argue all day that the kid could be completely innocent (or know full well that many folks at first glance at that thing could easily mistake it as far more than it really is)....what I cant get my head around is how his parents didnt mention something along those lines when he decided to go to school with the briefcase.

even something like "hey there ahmed, why not clean up that presentation a bit and hide the wires before some people freak out when you whip that out in the middle of a classroom" would have gone a long way into preventing this ridiculous situation.

im just not buying that this wasnt at least on some level, intentional to get the reaction it did.
 

Ken555

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eh, were talking about a grade school here...far worse has happened to kids for far less in the past few years (what about the kid that got suspended for eating his pop tart in the shape of a gun).

while one can argue all day that the kid could be completely innocent (or know full well that many folks at first glance at that thing could easily mistake it as far more than it really is)....what I cant get my head around is how his parents didnt mention something along those lines when he decided to go to school with the briefcase.

even something like "hey there ahmed, why not clean up that presentation a bit and hide the wires before some people freak out when you whip that out in the middle of a classroom" would have gone a long way into preventing this ridiculous situation.

im just not buying that this wasnt at least on some level, intentional to get the reaction it did.


Did the parents even know he was taking it to school?


Sent from my iPad
 

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im just not buying that this wasnt at least on some level, intentional to get the reaction it did.

You may be onto something Brian. I noticed this line in the referenced CNN article:
Ahmed's father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who immigrated from Sudan and has twice run for that country's presidency
:ponder:
 

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I am at a loss here as I don't understand why, if there was one iota of concern that this "thing" was an explosive device, the school wasn't evacuated.

-
 
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VegasBella

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eh, were talking about a grade school here...far worse has happened to kids for far less in the past few years (what about the kid that got suspended for eating his pop tart in the shape of a gun).
I think being arrested and then not being allowed to talk to your parents when you're a minor is actually worse than suspension. Just my opinion, but there it is.

The fact that there's a disturbing pattern of teachers and administrators over-reacting to innocent children does not make any of these incidents acceptable.

As to the rest of your post, the story I heard was that his Engineering teacher told him other teachers would not understand it and to keep it hidden. He had it in his backpack and the timer went off. He pulled it out to turn it off and that's when his English teacher noticed it and freaked out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/u...-investigation-for-building-a-clock.html?_r=0
 

Luanne

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The kid is 14, and in high school, not grade school. How many of us always knew what our kids were taking to school?

Sounds like he's a normal 14 year old [male] who probably didn't think it through when he took the clock to school. But it certainly could have been handled a whole lot better than cuffing him and leading him out of school.
 

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pretty sure that most schools "zero tolerance" policy applies to hoaxes, and or other normally harmless items (replica guns, squirt guns, etc) where administrators and teachers are simply instructed to take action at anything that could be viewed as a potential deadly situation...and then let the cops sort it out.

one can debate wheter that rule/policy is ridiculous...as it clearly results in some absurd reactions to what would otherwise be perfectly normal situations as reported by the news...but how much more burden are we going to put on teachers these days?

While I wont speak for everyone, id certainly take a 2nd (or 3rd) glance at what appears in the pictures posted on the internet if someone were "fiddling" with it in my presence...and id have to say that "oh its just a clock" is not the first reaction id have.
 

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Some people have been watching too many Mission Impossible movies... ;)

Or a teacher has been watching the 6 o'clock national news and realizes what kind of a world we live in now.

I wonder what the reaction would be if these same circumstances occurred in a school in Israel.
 

Luanne

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Brian, he first showed it to his engineering teacher. All that teacher said was not to show it to any of his other teachers. If there was a concern shouldn't he have confiscated it? Whatever the policy I still don't think handcuffs, and not allowing him to contact his parents, was they way it should have been handled.
 

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clearly the original teacher had the same thoughts everyone else did when the kid showed it to him, otherwise he wouldn't have told the kid to hide it from everyone else.


that said, ive seen about a million different "reports" on this story...some even go so far as to say the kid refused to tell police exactly what the item was when asked...and only at that point did he get placed under arrest....who knows what to believe these days.

its amazing to watch inflammatory stories morph in the media from one day to the next...perhaps amazing isnt a good word....tragic would be a better one.
 

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clearly the original teacher had the same thoughts everyone else did when the kid showed it to him, otherwise he wouldn't have told the kid to hide it from everyone else.

I don't understand what you mean by this. If the original teacher had the same thoughts as everyone else, why wouldn't he have taken action? If we thought there was any danger he should have taken it and reported the boy.
 

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because he clearly didnt want to get the child in trouble should another teacher see him with said item and this exact situation would play out as he feared.

what I meant was, by the original teacher specifically telling the kid to hide the item...he knew perfectly well that someone could mistake said "clock" for something far worse.
 
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