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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."
South of the Mason-Dixon line. Need we know more?
If only the poor young lady had been doing a forensic chemistry experiment to validate the Shroud of Turin or the remains of Noah's Ark, I'm quite sure she wouldn't have run afoul of the law there.
There we go, playing the race card. Sigh. What does a kid with a BB gun have to do with this? Nothing, but it "creates the narrative". We all know what the narrative is, race race race. It's always first on the list and it always gets shoehorned in even if it doesn't belong. Everyone sees it but due to the mainstream media's gatekeeper role nobody can talk back. This is why Americans distrust the media, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Jails for the mind. NCLB has ruined education, by far GWB worst piece of policy. That coupled with "zero tolerance" which equates to "no thinking by staff" we are ruining a generation of kids. Teaching to tests, which NCLB does prohibits this kind of "thinking" to experiment.
I'd have a rap sheet a mile long if I was in school and I only graduated 14y ago. And I didn't even do anything bad!
School authorities in Florida have always been on the retarded side of the coin. Suspending or expelling kids for this kind of thing is really disgusting. God it is depressing. I went to school in Florida and was lucky that most of my teachers were good at their jobs. But those above teachers in the school food chain are some of the worst creeps you could ever imagine.
America is a bunch of pussies now. Had something like this happened in the 50s-80s..maybe even the 90s, the result would have been a stern reprimand and at most a couple days suspension. This "Daddy" syndrome needs to end. I doubt even the French would freak out the way the school and DA have.
So now anything that blows up is automatically a weapon? I hope their school buses don't run on gas or diesel engines, then they would have to charge all the bus drivers with bringing weapons to school every day.
This is almost as stupid as suspending a 7 year old for having a pastry that's vaguely gun-shaped.
http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/03/pastry-gun.html
Was this really a science experiment? She was mixing household chemicals in a plastic bottle on school property. It had nothing to do with her science class. It's more likely she got this stuff out of the janitor's closet or something like that. It sounds more like a kid being stupid rather than one experimenting.
Not that I agree with the penalty in any way. Detention or suspension would be ok here since no real harm came from it. It doesn't merit police involvement, or comparison to an accidental shooting.
I'd like to believe that too. I really would.
So explain to me how a white teenager who shoots and kills his brother doesn't deserve to be charged with anything, while the same prosecutor decides that a black teenager who didn't injure anyone needs an adult felony conviction to show her that "there are consequences to actions.".
Perhaps they aren't being racist on purpose, but that's hardly a consolation to the student. Sufficently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
She is being tried as an adult, as such, the records will not be sealed. She is unfortunately fucked for life if she is found guilty...
And I really hope that whatever judge gets this case, tosses it out for stupidity reasons, and bitch slaps the educational establishment for this travesty.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Not many are saying that punishment isn't warranted. The problem is that the police were involved at all, that's the ridiculous part. Frankly if the police and DA have time to get involved in this sort of thing layoffs are long past due in this district.
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I think you need to take a step back and remember the guy who killed his brother did it with a presumably legal BB gun, you know, that shit that fires 6mm plastic bullets? This girl essentially made an IED. Colour has bugger all to do with any of this, don't understand why it's even brought up. That being said, I ran around playing war games as a teen and made plenty of those "bombs" and still turned out OK. :p
...tells me that it is massively unlikely this was intellectual curiosity. Some kid thought it would be funny to make a huge bang at a place where huge bangs are known to cause massive administrative overreaction.
When I first read this, I thought it was horrible. One of the articles linked in the story here called it a botched experiment. What kind of loony racist throws the book so hard at a kid who messed up a project? Then I went looking for the "experiment" and learned there was pretty much definitely nothing botched about this. Youtube is full of works bombs, which is apparently what these are called. A popular chemistry blog I stumbled into explains these are actually illegal to make. And I really don't see what else you could do with these components.
Now, this kid certainly doesn't deserve to be tried as an adult for multiple felonies just because they made a total dipshit choice that hurt nobody. But what's going on here is just usual-business prosecutorial excess, not racism. Ruining dumb high school kids' lives is practically what these fuckers live for lately, regardless of skin tone.
Its exactly that kind of stuff that got me into chemistry in the first place
SURELY NOT!!!!!
No one is saying it's OK. We're saying it's not a felony. Make the kid clean up the mess and suspend her for a week. Problem solved.
Excessive criminalization is a much bigger threat to us all than kids with drano bombs.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When you have zero tolerance policies then rightly or wrongly administrators and educators think they have no agency in the matter. Also educators don't have control of the police force they have welcomed into their own school. *DA's and AGs are political animals in "some" cases and this is just a stepping stone to bigger things so riding rough trod over people's lives will not be swayed.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Speaking of double standards, I think it's rather unfair to jump to the conclusion that the DA charged her because she's black. You'd need to show a history of bias to make an insinuation like that less than libelous. The Huffington Post op-ed makes loud protestations that it's not accusing anyone of anything, which might be enough to avert a libel charge. It does fall far short of decency, though. Mr. Lava makes no attempt to consider other possible differences between the cases of the white boy and the black girl, like the age difference between the kids or the fact that the BB gun accident happened at home and the chemistry accident happened at school.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
What exactly is the non-racist explanation for that lack of proportionality?
Think "war on drugs" logic. This chemistry experiment ended up producing what is technically an improvised explosive device, and IEDs like this are a "gateway drug" of sorts to IEDs that terrorists have used within the past month to kill or maim dozens of people.
They needed a "racist" slant on the article, so they found a completely unrelated incident where a white person did something "bad" and was not charged. The "obvious" conclusion therefore is that this teen's expulsion and arrest is CLEARLY motivated by racism, regardless of the details.
Lets not attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
And in this case, I hardly believe its about one being black,although it could play a part, it beingthe us,it seems more a thing about one being gun related and the other science related.
We all know what many americans hate most.
While there is a theory for that, it doesn't line up with the statements released. They're specifically citing the dangerous nature of the girls activities and the hallowed ground aspects of a school along with actions need consequences. I'm all for punishing the girl. Having actually read a few of the articles she did something stupid. Detention would be light. A suspension for a few days should be the most she gets in my opinion. Expulsion and charges are extremely overboard and charging her as an adult comes out of nowhere, considering both the lack of malice, the lack of injury, and uprightness of the accused. She didn't run away she was there when they came for her and owned up for her actions. She had support from students, teachers, and the principal directly. If this isn't a case for SOME sort of leniency what is?
Just another second banana
I once mixed ammonia and bleach on school property as an undergrad, just to see what would happen. That's called curiosity.
To say it wasn't a science experiment because it "had nothing to do with my science class" is to undercut what education is all about - making you curious enough to try stuff on your own.
I've seen this news elsewhere and Slashdot was the first place to call it a science experiment. I guess it could be, in the same sense as a Diet Coke & Mentos experiment or an "effects of flour on your best friend's head" experiment.
What's being done to her is completely ridiculous and she deserves nothing more than maybe a nasty look and a mild talking-to, but let's not stoop to yellow geek journalism
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
My now 17 year old Son was expelled from high school two years ago for... get this... popping a regular old helium balloon. He was charged with Disorderly Conduct (the catch-all "when we want to charge you with something" summary crime in Pennsylvania) but we managed to get that dismissed at the Magisterial District Court after about $15,000 in legal fees, most of which was spent trying to obtain school surveillance video showing that the balloon popped when he leaned up against a wall, pinching the balloon between his backpack and the wall, causing it to pop.
We've home-schooled him since then. It's truly amazing how absolutely brain-dead our government has become. It really does destroy everything it touches, including the education system.
As the saying goes, "zero tolerance = zero common sense"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUudTpSvudg
Makes a "Bang!" noise, that's all. Give her detention for doing it on school grounds, don't let her get a record that'll keep her from getting a future education. She's a smart and curious young person, that's all.
You still aren't explaining, without using race, how one kid who broke the law needs to have the most extreme charges possible filed agasint her, while another who broke a much more serious law (manslaughter) gets nothing.
The thing I find particularly telling is that nobody involved is arguing that this is just. The argument is that a law was technically broken, so they have no choice but to charge her. So why doesn't that argument apply to both people?
Don't count on it...
I also wonder how it is even possible to charge a 16yo as an adult. Those age limits are put in place for a reason - arbitrarily lifting them because some kid did something "exceptionally stupid" makes them worthless.
And this is really not something that should be punished at all. Other than for doing it on school grounds, presumably without proper supervision and safety measures.
No it wasn't, this experiment was done outside. The police report clearly states this if you had bothered to read. When I was a kid I did the same thing with dry ice and water as well as vinegar and baking soda. Water and baking powder were also interesting but pretty weak. Friends did all sorts of stuff with powdered iodine. All of us turned out just fine, we didn't have our lives ruined or curiosity killed. My teachers wouldn't have allowed me to do this but they might have demonstrated the reaction to our class as they did many other things. We're destroying our kids...
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I had dinner with a H.S. teacher recently and I was amazed at how things have changed. For example, it's now SOP for them to call the police when two kids get into a FIGHT. Even a basic fistfight with no weapons and no serious injuries. "Ridiculous" is right.
How does a kid being bullied not count as assault? Certainly when I was at school there was a lot of bullying going on and the school simply didn't care (even when people inevitably ended up injured). Whilst I'll agree that the first port of call should be for it to be handled internally in the school, if that doesn't work shouldn't the police be involved if only for the protection of the kids on the receiving end?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
No, it wasn't a science fair project, it was teenagers playing around in the bathroom at 7 am before school starts making a big bang for kicks and youtube. It was as much science as it was racism.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
The girl wanted to find out what happens if she mixes aluminum and drain cleaner. Her findings: under the experimental conditions (unsupervised, on school property, post-9/11), there is a fizz and a bang, a bunch of adults overreact, and you get charged with a felony. :-(
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I do think the race issue is worth discussing. As well as the gender issue.
But there's something more fundamental and less likely to stoke passions at play here:
DOING SCIENCE IS ABOUT MAKING MISTAKES. Her "punishment" should be to write a paper on what she was trying to do and why the results were not what she expected. Simple, end of story.
There should be no real punishment of any kind, much less the over the top expulsion and arrest.
The simple fact is that she should be encouraged to make mistakes, not punished for them. And the most basic problem we are dealing with is that our school systems don't understand this fact.