I still have too many questions unanswered to make a decision on the matter.
I would still like to see what the engineering teacher's point of view is/was. Anyone have a link?
As a former postal type employee*, I was trained to look for "bombs" in the mail.
Ok, training might be a stretch. They made us look at the USPS web page, and provided poster, on "suspicious" items.
United States Postal Inspection Service
Mail Bombs
It is important to be alert for suspicious parcels, but keep in mind that a mail bomb is an extremely rare occurrence. To illustrate just how rare, Postal Inspectors have investigated an average of 16 mail bombs over the last few years. By contrast, each year, the Postal Service processed over 170 billion pieces of mail. That means during the last few years,
the chances that a piece of mail actually contains a bomb average far less than one in 10 billion!
...
If you become suspicious of a mailing and are unable to verify the contents, observe the following safety precautions:
Poster 84, Suspicious Mail, tells employees what to do if they find a suspicious package:
- Don't open the article.
- Isolate the suspect parcel and evacuate the immediate area.
- Don't put it in water or a confined space, such as a desk drawer or cabinet.
- If possible, open windows in the immediate area to assist in venting potentially explosive gases.
- Don't worry about possible embarrassment if the item turns out to be innocent. Instead, contact the Postal Inspection Service and your local police department.
It's not clear to me whether or not the pencil box was opened to show the English teacher that there was nothing but a bunch of wires and circuit boards, which I would imagine even a lowly English teacher would recognize as not being a bomb.
But #1 on the list clearly states: Do not open it.
#5 on the list, is why I don't have a problem with the actions of anyone at the school, nor the police force.
Better to be embarrassed by misidentifying something, than dead.
Not sure if anyone has referenced the following yet, but I find it somewhat entertaining:
Like Ahmed Mohamed, Steve Wozniak Was Also Arrested for Building Something Cool in High School
9/17/2015
.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was also arrested for what a high-school principal thought was a bomb after he heard it beeping, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. What he heard was actually a metronome.
Here is the excerpt from the book:
In twelfth grade he built an electric metronome—one of those devises that keep time in music class—and realized it sounded like a bomb. So he took the labels off some of the big batteries, taped them together, and put it in a school locker; he rigged it to start ticking faster when the locker opened. Later that day he got called to the principal’s office. He thought it as because he had won, yet again, the school’s top math prize. Instead he was confronted by the police. The principal had been summoned when the device was found, bravely ran onto the football field clutching it to his chest, and pulled the wires off. Woz tried and failed to suppress his laughter. He actually got sent to the juvenile detention center, where he spent the night. It was a memorable experience. He taught the other prisoners how to disconnect the wires leading to the ceiling fans and connect them to the bars so people got shocked when touching them.
Wozniak posted on his
Facebook page that Mohamed's story took him back to his high school days. In reply to some comments on his post, Wozniak called Mohamed a "modern day hero" to people like him.
"From the most creative people I meet in high tech, I'd suggest that slight misbehavior is an essential ingredient of creative thinking," he wrote.
...
Now, it is clear that Steve intended for his device to appear to be a bomb. But as has been mentioned, things have changed in the last 47 years. (This makes me feel kind of old for some reason.)
According to the internets, Steve was a senior in 1968, and was attending high school in Kilgore Texas.
Actually, the comments on Steve's Facebook page are quite entertaining also. Lots of high school type shenanigans!
PAllen said:
Along the lines of Jim Hardy's "how times have changed" [ this was late 1960s ]...
In high school chemistry, somehow the teacher got wind of my interest in explosives.
...
What is it with boys and blowing things up. I didn't start college until I was 24, having spent 6 years in the navy. And having been a "nuke", I was averse to things blowing up.
I vaguely remember in chemistry lab, being surrounded by a bunch of 18 year olds, who as soon as the TA left the room, someone would say; "Let's blow something up!"
-----------------
* And yes, we did receive items in the mail intended to do harm to some of our staff.
[edit] One suspicious package had me call security. It turned out to be a dead fish.
Another suspicious package, which I dealt with myself, having been promoted to "stupidvisor", turned out to be a broken, improperly packaged bottle of barbecue sauce.
ps. Sorry about all the edits. (4 in total, I think.
)
Now 5!
, Yes I'm from Texas) I always declare that I have electronics in the case before they scan it (I would never trust some TSA handler to open it without me being there if I checked it in at the counter). I have only been asked for a detailed inspection once and that was in Honolulu for an agricultural inspection.