I wonder if that’s part of why they won’t admit they made a mistake.
I wouldn’t be shocked if a line of eager lawyers was forming outside of his home, already.
The more I think about it the more this solution makes sense. We really only have a couple of choices:
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Physically threaten or intimidate the police and school (dismissed because it’s immoral).
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Massive protest (dismissed because it’s been proven ineffective and further militarized the police)
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Call for the impeachment or dismissal of the leadership involved: school superintendent, police chief, mayor, etc (dismissed again because this never works)
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Sue, sue, sue. As distasteful as I used to think this was, it’s the only real option left. Sue for so much money it’s not just a few thousand dollars thry can wave away. You need to sue for 3-4x the annual operating budget of the offending party. Bankrupt them with a judgement and then you have comple control over them, or at least so much leverage that you can get anyone you want fired.
OMG I’d completely forgotten about that movie. Well done.
The kid’s father is a walking American Dream poster. Came from Sudan in the 80’s, sold hot dogs and delivered pizza, drove a cab, started his own cab company (which grew to 200 cars) and eventually sold it to Yellow Cab. Now he runs 2 businesses and has run for president of Sudan, twice. He’s also the guy who artfully debated Terry Jones when he burned the Quran in Florida.
Amazing…
His dad sold a 200 car taxi company to Yellow Cab? Awwwwwsome. Deep pockets. I really do hope he sues the pants off everyone involved for this humiliation.
Yeah this is perhaps the most clear-cut and outrageous example of the wicked combination of racism, stupidity, and xenophobia that seems to be endemic in parts of the USA today. Probably elsewhere, too, but it’s a full-time job just to keep track of the idiocy from Texas, much less the rest of the country or the world.
This is what really bugs me about this story: Zero-Tolerance policies are terrible and often create injustice, but from what’s been reported so far, I’m not even sure that this qualifies. I haven’t been able to figure out what policy the kid stepped on.
Does the school have some written policy against bringing electronics to school? Seems unlikely, as I’m virtually certain that 99.8% of the kids have a cellphone. Is there some policy that requires them to never bring anything that might conceivably be misconstrued as a bomb? Good luck with that. There are certainly laws against making false bomb threats, but every article so far has stressed that the kid never did that; quite the opposite.
I hope for the school’s sake that there is something that has not been reported yet, because otherwise this kid’s family is going to end up with a large sum of money.
On a brighter note, the #IStandWithAhmed hash-tag has apparently taken off. So the kid will no doubt be receiving some invitations from JPL and whatnot in the near future.
Your solution would ruin the education of a district that has ~35,000 K-12 students (assuming an even distribution, about 2700 students a grade) for who knows how many years because of the idiocy of a dozen or so people in charge. I wouldn’t consider that an option.
The school district has insurance. Suing it won’t bankrupt it.
Yeah. There’s Florida where Florida Man is even dumber than Texas Man. There’s Oklahoma where they have the highest execution rate of any state, no doubt more total than all of Europe combined, including Russia where there’s a moratorium. Kansas where they’d rather people grow up stupid than learn science or history. Alaska where for pity’s sake they allow Sarah Palin and all her family to run free-range with no strait-jacket or even nurses to watch over them. Massachusetts where we don’t even know how to make a left turn without blocking traffic in both directions…
President Obama @POTUS 23m23 minutes ago
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.
Nice of him.
Nothing like a massive overreaction to help stem our overreaction culture.
I have sympathy for everyone involved…it can’t be easy to figure out the right thing to do in our currently shitty culture where every option is wrong.
Just a bit of common sense in this case would have resulted in the clock being put in the office for Ahmed to take it home after school.
CONFIRMED: OBAMA IS A MUSLIM
Yeah. I can sympathize with the “huge lawsuit, everyone involved to lose their jobs” position, but I don’t think it’s good for society. We should probably, as a rule, try to error on the side of less coercion.
Don’t worry, the school district is on top of things. Official notice to parents, will rehost in case of reddit.
We arepleased to report that after the police department’s assessment, the item discovered at school didnot pose a threat to your child’s safety.
Believe it or not, the item didn’t pose a threat to anything well before the police department’s assessment. You idiots.
Does anyone have any options other than the 4 I presented? A massive lawsuit is the least bad of all the options. And as for bankrupting the school? Tough shit. Let them be a lesson to others, which is entirely the point of punitive lawsuits. Maybe next time they won’t lead a bright and curious kid out in handcuffs for being bright and curious. Should companies never face lawsuits for their actions because they may have to lay people off? I reject that wholly.
The parents of that school need to be organizing their kids in protest, keeping them home from school until the principals and police chief steps down. Or, they can live in their apathy and ignorance and a bunch of lawyers can take all their tax reserves and give it to that family. They seem like swell people, I’m sure they’d put it to good use.
Well, public ridicule to the point where the President of the United States pretty much calls you a dumbass seems to be working out OK. At least for the kid.
I suggest a modest lawsuit, to include a public apology and a revision to the relevant school and police policies. I don’t support disproportionate and inconsistent punishment as “a lesson to others”. I think it’s a flawed principle and it invites unintended consequences.