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Florida Teen Expelled and Arrested For Science Experiment
First time accepted submitter ruhri writes "A 16 year-old girl in Florida not only has been expelled from her high school but also is being charged as an adult with a felony after replicating the classic toilet-bowl cleaner and aluminum foil experiment. This has quite a number of scientists and science educators up in arms. The fact that she's African American and that the same assistant state attorney has decided not to charge a white teenager who accidentally killed his brother with a BB gun has some thinking whether this is a case of doing science while black."
I don't think that this is race related, I think that the punishment is so harsh because everyone is scared of improvised explosive devices after Boston. When I first heard the story it was reported as "An Acid Bomb was Set Off At a Local High School".
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Reading the police report suddenly turns into "friend told this girl to mix the two and see what happens". "friend" then runs off. This wasn't a science fair, or a science experiment. it was "hey yall watch this" in a school. No article mentions it was at an actual science fair, she just inserted the word into her statement.
I see no mention in the article about a bathroom; it was outside near a gazebo and she stated that she was doing a science fair experiment.
-SaNo
No. Apparently they have charged rape suspects as Juveniles in that area, but a good student who hurt nobody will be tried as an adult??? It will never drop off her record. Freaking insane.
There is a petition to get the charges dropped and it has well over 10k signatures already:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-bartow-police-and-bartow-high-school-drop-charges-against-kiera-wilmot?share_id=dFwlXuyxHk&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
This girl essentially made an IED.
If you think mixing toilet cleaner and aluminum foil is essentially making an IED, then you'd be perfect for a modern school's zero-tolerance enforcement officer. Personally I'd go for the potassium permanganate and glycerine experiment, or dropping metallic sodium into water. I suppose they qualify as WMD's.
She did *not* make an IED.
What a unabashedly idiotic statement.
She is being charged as an adult, so I don't think the records will be sealed. We are thus talking about seriously impairing someones life over mixing a couple cleaning agents in a plastic bottle.
It's sodium hydroxide which is basic, not acidic. Yes, it turns the fats in your body to soap, and is a very effective way to melt down a body, but the process is very slow.
As someone who has had an experiment of this very nature go haywire in my face I know from first hand experience that it's very unpleasant. But...please don't try to make out that the solution will melt someone's skin off in front of their eyes, the victim will have plenty and plenty of time to get water on the burn to dilute and remove the hydroxide. In the eyes won't be some easy, but I would be highly surprised if someone lost their vision provided they reacted in any kind of normal way: "holy shit, my eyes sting like living hell, I'd better wash them out with water *immediately*!!!"
Yes, an explosion in the face won't be good, but again, for a hydrogen explosion like this to do any real damage to life or property it has to be in a confined space and produce a lot of gas. In the open air you would have to make a monsterous amount of gas, and even then we'd be talking about a mild concussion and possibly ear-drum damage.
Anyway, the point of my response is to try and provide some rational perspective of the true *danger* and *risk* involved here.
It's only an apparent lack of consistency if you use the two items to create the context in which to judge the responses. Here's the more likely scenario:
* There was no punishment forthcoming in the accidental shooting case because, after determining that there was no intent involved, and that it was, in fact, accidental, no punishment was deserved. Since there was no possibility of the parents suing themselves for damages, or that affecting the greater population, it got left at that.
* The incident on school property was punished because A) There was clearly an intent to make the explosion and B) it was on school property. That means lots of children who could potentially have been harmed, and that means lots of parents who could potentially sue the school system. Even if no one got injured, the potential for injury might be enough to have a jury in a civil suit feel that the plaintiff is "entitled" to "damages."
In that second case, everyone suffers. If the school has to pay out money to one set of irate parents, other suits will likely follow as everyone thinks they need to "get theirs," too. But guess who is on the hook? The school district, funded by property taxes or whatever they use in Florida. Thus, the community is the ones putting up the money to pay out to some jack-ass members of the community who want to take advantage of the situation. Being able to say "Look, no one got hurt but we have dealt with the perpetrator to the fullest extent of the law" goes a long way in staving off civil complaints, or having them be validated by a jury if someone thinks of doing it anyway.
It's all a CYA move. Does it suck? Yes. is it fair? No. Is life fair? Hell no. But unfortunately, we live in a chicken-shit, overly litigious society where these things happen. My mother is a public school teacher and the district where she teaches has had to deal with things like this in the past. "Science" wasn't involved, but the schools have been sued in the past, and in one incident $5,000,000 was awarded for "negligence" by the administration because two guys were fighting over a girl and one went through a plate glass window. Public schools are strapped enough for cash as it is, and losing $5,000,000 when you're already in budget shortfalls due to declining real estate values (and thus property tax revenue) is tough.
I would wager anything that was what they were concerned with above anything else.
I'm a non-anonymous Southerner, and I can agree that while it's probably not quite as bad as people elsewhere believe it is, we've still not quite escaped our past. Things are getting better generally (look back at the 1960s and 1970s and you will see that is factual), but yes, things like this at the very least give the appearance of a socially backwards society. A friend of mine from NYC once told me, "I thought I had seen racism. Then I came to college here."
If you abhor racism, the very fact that it is stronger here than in many places is a reason to STAY - I can be an active voice against it.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
According to the incident report, "Mr. Durham advised Kiera told him she was conducting a science fair experiment... Wilmot advised she did not know what would happen when she mixed the ingredients. Wilmot advised she thought it would just cause some smoke." There were no injuries, no damage, not even clear intent. Where is the felony crime here? It's only in the mind of Assistant State Attorney Tammy Glotfelty.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
I agree completely.
Polk County School's justification for expullsion was (from TFA)
Anytime a student makes a bad choice it is disappointing to us. We urge our parents to join us in conveying the message that there are consequences to actions.
Yes, Polk County School, I think the 16-year-old understands what the general concept of punishment is and that actions have consequences. I don't see how they're going to be able to explain why a small explosion that produced as much force as any other gas reaction in a sealed bottle deserves expulsion, a felony charge, and being tried as an adult.
This one comment on TFA also seems appropriate:
User: [ideasrule]
Guys and girls, we should be engaging in activism instead of just posting comments! I've collected the sites and emails offered by other users into one place:
Change.org petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/the-bartow-police-and-bartow-high-school-drop-charges-against-kiera-wilmot
Police department complaint form: http://www.cityofbartow.net/index.aspx?recordid=103&page=18
School superintendent: john.stewart@polk-fl.net
School principal: Ronald.Pritchard@polk-fl.net
The other email someone offered, lbryan.pd@cityofbartow.net, is of "Crime Prevention Practioner" Lyn Bryan and it doesn't work (my email was blocked).
Remember that the school principal is a reasonable person who rightly thinks the girl didn't intend any harm, so we should be supportive of him.
Chavez was no dictator. A worthless shitbag he was, but that is not what a dictator is.
China was not socialist or Marxist. Definitely not the latter. They never went through a stage of capitalism and industrialization before having their revolution. Dictators sure, talk about communism sure. If you want to call them that since so far all attempts have gone that way, have fun.
You can be left or right and authoritarian. These are two different axis.
Or it could just be a case of two different prosecutors having different standards
RTFA. Same prosecutor in both cases.