Quote:
Originally Posted by Monochron
Your interpretation hinges on the administration having to report the clock to the police. I won't claim to know for certain, but I don't think a Zero Tolerance policy applies to any electronics brought into a school. I think the administrators / teachers HAD to believe that Ahmed brought a hoax bomb to the school. They don't call the police for every piece of electronics brought to school.
The real question we need to be asking is why they thought he had intentionally brought a hoax bomb. And that question is much more likely to end in racism.
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You are generalizing to make your point. I totally agree (whatever rules exist) should not apply to "any electronics" but it could readily apply to any "disassembled active electronics". How many students disassemble a working clock and bring it to school? I've been helping with robotics for 12 years and never seen a student do such a thing - all kinds of Arduinos and stuff brought to the meetings but never just take something apart and show it around school. I don't understand what the kid was doing nor do I assign any nefarious intent.
I'm thinking they concluded there was some tiny chance he intended for it to be a hoax. They didn't want to put their own jobs in jeopardy - bureaucrats trapped in a zero-tolerance framework. What I'm saying is they they let policy and procedure supplant common sense. It is hard to put ourselves in their position because we 1000% KNOW it was a clock.
The more I think about this I would have counseled the student to not show it around, just like his engineering teacher. But I may have kept it for him till he could pick it up on his way home - thinking some idiot may not know what this is and react poorly. 20/20 hindsight maybe...