Posted on 09/22/2007 6:37:50 AM PDT by Turret Gunner A20
Students from MIT are SUPPOSED to be our SMARTEST.
I haven't seen information that she intended any sort of political statement.
I think you are on the right track. The early news reports made it sound like a student activist wore a fake bomb strapped to her chest and walked into the airport as 'performance art.'
What I've read since then is a very different story. The girl is a good student majoring in Electrical Engineering. MIT had a career fair that day, and wanting to stand out, she dressed up in a funny costume that had a circuit board with a flashing star on the front, and her major 'Course VI' written on the back of her sweatshirt. (Not the way I'd try to impress a future employer, but MIT is MIT). She was so proud of her costume that she decided to wear it to the airport to meet her boyfriend later that day. She didn't make any threatening moves, and no one even noticed her until she walked up to the information desk to ask when her boyfriend's flight was arriving. Rather than asking her 'what in the world do you have on your sweatshirt?' and informing her that it really wasn't appropriate to wear something like that to an airport in these times, the person at the information desk presses the panic button. Five minutes later the SWAT team arrives with submachine guns.
It seems like equal parts stupidity by a college student who should have known better than to wear a funny costume to an airport, and over-reaction by an airport security staff that didn't use common sense.
What I have read is that she was meeting someone at the airport. I can understand her little light up board. Maybe she was trying to impress whom ever she was meeting. But the Play Dough in her hands tends to give me pause.
My intent was not to be mean but to comment on the reactive response that these LEOs consistently display around here......pavlovian response: LED = bomb/ good cop = donut.
Your attack is also very predictable I suggest that you work on perfecting your speechlessness.
bad cop != donut
The proper response would have been:
1. Stop her
2. Inspect the device.
3. Realize it's a bread-board with a battery and some leds
4. Ask her to remove it from sight
5. Turn her loose.
That's not a bomb. It doesn't look like a bomb. It's not being carried how bombs are generally carried (i.e. sewn into pockets in a vest hidden under clothing). There's no way you could hide any explosive in or around that device. After a few questions, any cop with a few working neurons would figure out that she's not a threat. The cops are idiots.
I notice in all of your descriptions, you carefully avoid mentioning the Play-Do and its purpose. The defense attorney needs to hire you to run the PR spin.
Now I am really really frightened. We can all question whether Star's actions were sufficiently circumspect, but she is 19 and obviously more of a geek than a woman of the world. What is really really scary is the burgeoning and manifest collective stupidity of the MIT faculty and administration.
Since when does the head of a leading university treat the campus cop as a trusted colleague much less his legal adviser? I know it his hard for this MIT hack (yes he is really really dumb and unprofessional) to remember, but there is a little red brick school up the road that has a bunch of lawyers that could have told this dunce not to make absolutely stupid statements. If he doesn't want to consult Duhshitzwitz, then Brandeis, Tufts and Boston University also have reputable legal faculties.
When was it ever sensible for someone to spout off an official opinion after admitting that he didn't have all the facts (and couldn't because he states that he hadn't actually talked to the young lady)?
In particular since when did "causing alarm" become an actionable offense. Many many many folks on this forum or traveling through Logan airport could take one look at that young lady's breadboard with flashing LED's and tell you with absolute confidence that it is not a detonator of anything other than the egotistical sense of self importance of a bunch of security nuts. If none amongst our Thousands Standing Around (TSA) could see that this was not a harmful device, we have much bigger problems than an allegedly immature college student.
I really hate to think where this new injunction, "thou shalt not cause alarm" may take us. Am I forbidden to walk my dog at 3:00AM however much fuss he might make to go out because I can foresee that I will cause alarm among our neighborhood watch busibodies (who don't have full-time work) who found it suspicious that someone was parked in the entrance changing a tire (which also could foreseeably have caused alarm)? Am I responsible because a squeaky wheel on my hand luggage could foreseeably "raise alarm" among the TSA crowd?
There is no hope when the adminstration of MIT is this dumb.
Well, since the flashing LED's are clearly not a detonator as half the passenger traffic through Boston Logan (one of three leading education and technology centers in the US) could have told these idiot security hacks, then what is the purpose of the Play-Doh? I think they need to answer and explain their perfervid paranoid imaginings before she needs to say a word.
If I traveled with my 3-year old son (back when he was 3) with a Playschool radio (which is a whole lot more suspicious a decoy than a breadboard w/flashing LED's) and a can of playdoh, am I resposonsible for "causing alarm?" Or is the fault a bunch of sub 100 IQ security weenies who work security because they don't have the brains to get a job that is even slightly more interesting than rifling through bags of dirty linen.
I'm glad you have the ability to see through opaque objects to tell what is or is not fastened to the back of it. I'm one of the many folks in the country that can't.
A friend of mine was once detained at the airport and questioned by the FBI because the guards saw an item in his luggage that they thought looked like a bomb. It was a chess clock. This was long before 9/11.
And, by the way, glad to know that if you were running security, you would have let through the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 (a radio boom box and explosive).
On the other hand, if you pulled the stunt with a radio and Play Doh, if I was on the jury, you could expect a rather long time to contemplate your actions while enjoying federal hospitality.
I’m not seeing any play dough.
does sound like over-reaction.
a circuit boad on a t shirt with flashing lights isnt a bomb.
are the security people that dumb as to not be able to tell the difference?
the security in the airpots is a joke, any frequent traveler has many stories of stuff just going thru.
what really galls me is when they shake down some poor old lady who has to get out of her wheelchair to go thru. i have seen them be completely insensitive and cruel.
I think you are to be congratulated on a balanced view of this. I would add one thing to this, however, which is who should bear the brunt of the culpability and responsibility.
This young lady is 19. She is barely and adult, and as the old saw goes, judgment is the result of experience and experience is the result of bad judgment.
The airport public information attendant and more especially the security folks are supposed to be mature adults. After all we trust them with automatic weapons in a crowded public facility. In balancing the scale of responsbility, the fault of judgment has to weigh heavily on those whose official responsibilities require them to demonstrate that judgment and responsibility.
In my view they have utterly failed the public trust emplaced in them.
We don't place public trust in college students, nor should we. In addition to studying, they are supposed to be having fun. They are not supposed to be responsible, so long as they don't bring actual harm to others ( and by no stretch of the imagination of anyone other than a sub IQ donut muncher has she cause anyone harm).
By this balancing, the young lady should be returned to resume her studies with no blemish on her record, and the hope that she will have learned something about being more circumspect in her actions. The dunderheads who run security at Logan need to be stripped of any responsibility and most certainly should no longer be trusted with directing anyone who has the ability to use deadly force in the name of the citizens of Massachussetts and the US.
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