Teen Boy Arrested over Homemade Clock
A 14-year-old Texas high school student has been arrested, suspended, and threatened with expulsion for bringing a hand-made digital clock to school, after officials and police believed he’d tried to make a bomb. This kid loves robotics, makes his own radios, and has a bedroom full of circuit boards. He built the clock in 20 minutes: a board and power supply inside a pencil box, with a digital display and a tiger hologram on the front. But when he brought it to school to show his teachers, things quickly went bad. A teacher confiscated the clock, alerting the school the principal. The police arrived shortly afterward, and the kid was handcuffed and taken away.
No photos of the clock appear to be available, because it’s been confiscated by police as evidence. You’ll have to imagine your own threatening-looking pencil box, and decide if it could reasonably be mistaken for a bomb. Edit: there’s now a photo.
In my ideal world, the teacher believes the clock is unthreatening, but alerts the principal anyway because it looks like a bad imitation of a prop from Mission Impossible. In an age where school shootings and random violence are depressingly common, the teacher would probably be reprimanded if he didn’t take that step. The student is summoned to the principal’s office, where he opens the case, demonstrates that it’s just a clock, and explains that he built it for fun. Then everybody goes home happy. End of story.
So what went wrong here? The student, Ahmed Mohamed, is Muslim. There are many people who believe this incident might have been resolved differently if the nerd with the clock was named Jimmy rather than Ahmed. Is this a case of “Islamophobia” leading people to irrational fears of anything that looks even slightly suspicious?
Under better circumstances, Ahmed’s teachers would have been familiar with his love for electronic tinkering, and wouldn’t have seen anything sinister about his clock project. But as a 9th grader, he had just finished middle school, and was in his first few weeks of high school. The teachers at his new school didn’t know him.
When I was in high school 25 years ago, I actually did something similar. A friend and I built a “locker alarm” in a Radio Shack plastic project case. Hidden inside the locker of an unsuspecting victim, it would make a loud and annoying sound that couldn’t be deactivated without a special key. One day I hid the alarm box inside a friend’s locker, and later learned that it had been confiscated by the school’s janitor, who had disassembled the case and removed the battery. When I sheepishly asked for it back, it was returned to me without any argument. But I suspect that if I tried the same thing today, I would get in a huge amount of trouble for a prank like that.
I understand that as electronics hobbyists, we need to remember that electronics can be used to make dangerous things, and some amount of fear or suspicion is normal. If we build something that a reasonable observer thinks looks potentially dangerous, then we need to take steps to demonstrate that it’s not, otherwise we risk trouble. For example, building a fake bomb with a simulated countdown timer and digital explosion sound effects isn’t cool. So how do we define “looks dangerous”, and who is the “reasonable observer” making that judgement? I hope that a simple clock or an Aqua Teen Hunger Force sign would not lead to a bomb scare. Do we now live in a world where anything with a battery, circuit board, and wires is presumed dangerous?
What do you think? Did you ever build a “presumed dangerous” electronic device?
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American schools are somewhat insane — here’s Reason’s coverage of the incident, including links to other bizarre zero tolerance incidents: https://reason.com/blog/2015/09/16/liberals-making-istandwithahmed-about-ra
Let’s not judge all American schools over a few of these incidents. Most of these incidents is a result of the school/district taking on what is called a “zero tolerance” policy. It makes administration of schools much easier because it takes the decision making process away from the administration, so they can focus more on the education itself. The problem with the policy is that it leaves no room for error. Once an administrator or teacher makes a decision, is it almost impossible for the system to reverse itself. That is exactly what happened here.
I saw the photo of the “clock,” and, with over 30 years working on home-made electronic projects, I can fully understand how someone with zero knowledge of electronics can even be somewhat suspicious of the case and its contents. IMO, the teacher did the right thing because, as some of you may not fully understand, that the country as a whole is on the defense. The student was never arrested. No charges were made. He’s not getting suspended or expelled. The worst that happened is that it scared the bejesus out of the kid, and the school as a whole looked foolish. But it is better that all of this happened, than for the school to actually become nothing more than a crater.
Also, there’s no race involved in this. Activists and the like are always trying to pull the card. The fact is that the school district is Democrat-run, as some pundits attempted to put blame on the right for Islamophobia.
His creations look like disassembled gadgets and his desk looks a bit too clean to be doing electronics for hobby.
looks like he is a Baaaaaaad boy… building things that look like bombs is not a good idea…. seen the picture of this contraption? in a Brief Case and all. I saw the picture… His dad might be in on it too…
Sounds fishy to me.