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Okay, so what's crazy is that....I used to work near that school!! And Irving is actually really, really diverse with a big mosque and lots of muslim students, so I'm really surprised the administration of the HS was this dumb, because they should really be used to having a diverse population.

When I worked at a different school nearby, I would have 12-15 students in my classroom during lunch during the month of Ramadan--they didn't want to go to the cafeteria and smell the food, so they hung out in my room. I had students from Eritrea, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Morocco, you name it.

The whole thing is just dumb. I actually have coworkers that have worked at that school--I'm pretty surprised it happened, to be honest. It's not really a "backwards" school district at all. It makes me wonder about the particular teachers involved.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: I am glad you made a mistake and posted a random link. Just reading that made me giggle and this story otherwise is so depressing! Did you see what president Obama tweeted about it?

My first thought was that it is SO cool that he did that. Then I face palmed. Freaking A

Just finished reading this. To be honest that clock kind of did look like a b0mb. I'm sorry to say.

I'm an engineer and I know he has all the wires going all around for wiring the device the motherboard and all that but it looks pretty haphazard (which is normal he's a kid) but I can totally seeing a teacher freaking out, coupled with racism.

Calling the police was a bit extreme but in the day and age of so many school shooting I want to think that the teacher was just being safe.

I mean here's a picture of it... I think it not being on probably makes it look even more like a b0mb.

Given the picture of the device I don't fault the school for calling the police, but it was completely inappropriate for him to be placed under arrest. It is a little ridiculous that the engineering teacher saw it and was not concerned but told him not to show anyone else, but then when another teacher saw it they didn't have the engineering teacher vet it. He never threatened anyone or anything, the police knew it was harmless yet they were still considering charging him with a hoax bomb. Yes I would say prejudices are absolutely getting in the way of good judgement. It's disgusting actually.

Could the police not tell that it wasn't a bomb?
I mean, the cops were called, they arrived at the school, they apparently looked at the device....would they not have known that there were no explosives in it? Was handcuffing the kid really necessary?

Regardless of how diverse the school/area is, I think that race probably DID have an effect on how it was handled. But what is 100% affected by his race is the media coverage/public outcry about the event. We won't know if it would have gone down differently if the kid had been a super-white John Smith...but either way, its pretty unfair to the kid.

The whole situation is ridiculous and wasn't handled well. If the Engineering Teacher saw it and realized that it might LOOK suspicious, she should've been the one to do something about it. Instead of saying "Don't show anyone else," she should have said something more like "To be on the safe side so you don't get in trouble for having something suspicious, let me hold onto it until the end of the day." DONE.

And WTF is with the police? He told them it was a clock and they didn't like that answer so they arrested him?? Was he supposed to be like "Oh, you're right, it's a bomb." Gahhh. AND he was apparently suspended! This whole thing makes me ragey.

I feel so bad for the kid but I do agree with your husband. Unfortunately if my son's name is that I also would say hey it is probably not a good idea to bring it to school and give it to your teacher.

It is a very unfortunate misunderstanding, I think. if the kid has been going there for a while and bring that to school and they arrested him then I'd say hey that's really out of line. But that kid is new and you just don't know. And that thing does look like a bomb lol (how does a bomb look like anyway?). If I were the teacher / principal, I probably won't call the cops though.... maybe talk to the child and call his parents..? I am disappointed at the suspension though...

I am thinking, if an Asian kid bring this in to school, he'd probably be OK and be praised. Racial profiling is a very unfortunate fact of life especially we are living in the age of ISIS and the middle east unrest. I am really happy that the kid gets invited to White House though. That's a very very nice make up for it.

Not to defend this situation at all (because I think it's ridiculous and indefensible), but to shed some light on the mentality of that school district...

It's a pretty rough area. Well, it's not ALL rough, but a lot of it is rough. They are all Title 1, low income schools. When I worked at a different school nearby, we had a boy bring a gun to school with the intention of killing another boy for gang initiation, and JUST BY CHANCE, the gun was found in a random locker search.

Yes, these are the types of schools where random locker searches are done. And random drug dog searches (often. Like once a week). Each school has 2 full time security officers AND a full time police officer (a real police officer). My very first year, I had 1 kid in an ankle monitor because of juvenile assault charges and another kid who had a restraining order against a 3rd student.

There was a gang shooting at point blank range in the middle of the hallway in one of this town's other High Schools about 10 years ago. So....tensions run high there. Fights and violence are all too common. So probably these teachers were a little too keen to see a problem where there wasn't one.

It's unfortunate all around--that this poor kiddo who just wanted to impress his teachers was caught in the crosshairs of a system where teachers feel unsafe and quick to point fingers, where other kids are living such violent, unstable lives. ugh.

The way it was handled after the principal was notified is absurd. This kid should not have been arrested and should never have been detained or questioned without his parents and/or a lawyer present. And WTF is up with the school suspending him for 3 days?

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: I think this would come back to my general question - was it a "bring your project to school day" or not. If this was an unprompted show-and-tell by the boy I do not think its inappropriate that his actions be viewed as "not following the rules". Their are many other "what if" scenarios of harmless things he could bring into a school that would put other kids at risk. In the schools I attended - if you wanted to bring something in to show off in school you signed up for it and were granted approval. (We also went through metal detectors though so this would have been caught then.) It certainly does not warrant suspension but I dont think him being told by an authority figure why what he did was not right is wrong in this case. That is how children learn - it doesnt mean he did it maliciously or to cause harm to anyone but that does not mean it is not a learning situation. And I hope the media does not teach him that the error in his action starts with his race or ethnicity. At the end of the day he did bring an un-approved object into a school...its ok to teach him the more appropriate way to have handled the situation...without punishing him.

I heard an interview with Ahmed yesterday on NPR and he said that now he feels afraid to do projects like this and share them with his teachers/classmates. The over-reactions of these adults have potentially squealched a smart young kid's creative and scientific drive to push himself to learn new things. THAT is sad.

If the engineering teacher had concerns, she should have voiced them to him from the get-go and offered to keep the clock in her classroom. But she didn't. So it started beeping in English class, causing that teacher to become concerned. I do understand that. I understand involving the principal. I don't understand calling the police and I REALLY don't understand the police taking him into a room with 5 or 6 officers who proceeded to interrogate him, without his parents or any other adult representation. That is completely inappropriate, and if I were his parents, I'd be pressing charges.

In my gut I believe this is racially motivated, at least a lot of the over-reaction is. I think it is also driven by the time in which we live. When I was a freshman in high school (22 years ago), a kid in my class (of Middle Eastern decent) stood on top of a table in the middle of the cafeteria, raised his bookpack over his head, and yelled, "I've got a bomb in my backpack!" I'm pretty sure he received a couple of days of in-school suspension. Most of us just laughed at him.