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Comment by chipgap98 | Hacker News Reader

That letter from the school just adds insult to injury.

> talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduact and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited

Since when can you not bring a clock to school?

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If the school and the police had acted in the correct way this would be no big deal. Hey, we have a device here that could be a bomb. Police show up, call bomb specialist. Bomb specialist laughs in a few peoples faces, the school apologizes, the kid keeps tinkering.

But no they had to go and dig in. Which makes this really wrong on their part. I hate it when organizations take a stance around stupidity.

Or even better- start by quietly calling him to the principal's office. Ask him about his clock. Tell him people were thinking he might be wanting to pull some bomb pranks, and that would be a very bad idea. Ask him to tell his teachers the day before the next time he wants to show off his gadgetry. Send him back to class.

Or don't do that, either, because it is not right to assume people are going to pull off bomb hoaxes. (Doubly so when the only real reason for the suspicion is skin color.)

Yeah but you also don't want to be the admin at a school with a bomb where there were "signs a student was creating bombs before he went ape shit". I agree with the color statement, but not addressing the issue at all can be just as bad as an overreaction.

Except there were no such signs, therefore let's not be jerks to a kid.

Obviously someone thought there was a sign, even the teacher told him not to show it to anyone else outside that class. I think saying that a homemade clock isn't a sign is greatly underestimating how the news is capable of skewing things to screw people over.

I looked at the pictures. Any adult with even the slightest understanding of how a bomb must physically work--like, "have something that can actually explode"--should be so utterly certain of its purpose that your concern trolling should horrify them.

Flavor Flav is going to be in HUGE trouble.

I looked at the code of conduct, and it makes absolutely zero mention of this sort of thing.

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