A studious-looking high school freshman wearing a NASA T-shirt was led from his Irving, Texas, school in handcuffs this week in what appears to be an overreaction to an electronics project he wanted to show his engineering teacher.
What makes this episode particularly troublesome is the possibility that 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was more a target of suspicion because he is Muslim.
Keeping students safe is, of course, paramount for all teachers and administrators, and a sense of caution often entails making precarious judgment calls. That’s particularly challenging in the moment. But the school needs to be a safe learning environment for all students.
That was not afforded to Ahmed. Did Irving school and police officials place undue weight on Ahmed’s ethnicity and religion, assuming terrorist motivations?
The atmosphere in Irving makes it ripe for such controversy. Mayor Beth Van Duyne drew national attention this year with a months-long campaign asserting that Muslims were trying to impose Shariah law on U.S. courts. …
Against that backdrop, Ahmed spent his evening Sunday working on an electronics project consisting of a circuit board, wires and a digital panel that displayed the time of day, all tucked into a pencil box.
A homemade clock, that’s all, Ahmed said. It looks like a bomb, three of his teachers responded. …
Ahmed later said police interrogated him without allowing him to phone his parents, and the school principal wanted him to sign a written statement. A police spokesman suggested Ahmed was uncooperative.
Ultimately, Ahmed was released without charges. He received a three-day suspension, even though the school district insists that the item posed no threat.
Our bigger concern is the message this sends to inquisitive students considering the very STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — that employers are begging them to pursue.
Computer engineering and robotics are now the rage in high schools across America. Students proudly display their inventions at school fairs and competitions the way previous generations showed off spewing volcano models.
What a sad statement if, for Muslim kids, a shadow of suspicion signals that, for them, such options are out of bounds.
— The Dallas Morning News
