What all you apologists are missing here is that the cops have no way of knowing whether it’s a joke between friends or not. Deliberately walking into an airport with playdoh and wires in your hands and a flashing circuitboard on your chest is not only stupid, it’s asking to be arrested, and I have absolutely no sympathy for her.
If the security forces in airports had to deal with this 5-7 times a week, it would be consuming resources which could be put to much better use. It also increases the probability that a REAL bomb gets through, because there always exists the possibility that a security person (after checking out the 27th college kid with electronics on his/her chest this month) could let an actual bomber go, due to fatigue.
This is what you kids need to understand: the world is not your playpen to do as you want. There are rules to follow, and for the most part, they are there for a good reason. In this case they have been put into place because there are Muslim terrorists (as well as other kinds) who would like nothing better than to blow up some planes. Maybe it’s inconvenient, maybe you feel your right to wear circuitboards on your chest are being violated, but that’s too bad.
I’m not apologising for her. As I said, I haven’t been following the story closely. It definitely was a stupid thing to do in our paranoid society. All I’m saying is:
[ul][li]She may not have done it intentionally to provoke security; and,[/li][li]She may have the ability to make a ‘professional’ electronic device and the Radio Shack-level thing might have been an engineering nerd’s joke.[/ul][/li]Did Security overreact? I think they reacted as they would have been expected to react when faced with a suspicious device.
I’m just commenting on posts that said an EE student should have made a ‘more advanced’ device and pointing out that a person who is capable of making one (not saying Star is or isn’t) might choose to make something crude for comedic or artistic reasons.
I’m still confused as to how that thing could make her “stand out on Career Day.”
It’s ugly and amateurish. Do MIT students really wear hooded sweatshirts to Career Day? There’s a market for employees who look like bag people or the anti-social? I know engineering firms can tend to hire creative types who might not fit a corporate appearance “norm” but really, this is how students dress to impress employers? Or does Career Day actually have nothing to do with getting a job? Is it just the kids sort of advertising what kind of career program they are in?
Anyway, she was a little stupid not to think she shouldn’t have worn such a thing to an airport, and then stupid to ignore an airport employee’s questions about it and walk away. But I’m not sure she deserves jail time or even a fine. She did a stupid thing and hopefully with all this publicity nobody else will do something as idiotic.
I’ve been in the position of having to almost use deadly force twice in similar situations. Without going into too much detail a person was in a clearly marked restricted area at 3 AM carrying a suspicious object. If they hadn’t complied with “Halt or I’ll fire”. I would’ve fired. And I was told to shoot to kill.
This girl is an idiot. I don’t understand how some people are even bothering to defend her behaviour. Being an MIT student doesn’t earn her any extra “common sense” points either.
Again, and again – cite for the Wires in the Play Doh.
I don’t think these existed. News reports keep trying to make this thing sound more like a bomb than it is, apparently on the assumption that she was trying to make a hoax bomb, complete with Play-Doh with wires standing in as plastique attached to a piece of circuit board strapped to her chest. This is pretty clearly a false picture. She was an MIT student with a piece of experimenter board with a crude star on it (which no one has claimed was lit and flashing – and that circuit couldn’t have made it flash anyway). It’s manifestly clear it wasn’t a hoax device. The worst things she’s guilty of are cluelessness and really crude breadboarding.
So if I can see what makes these situations similar in your mind, in the situation being discussed, this “person was … carrying a suspicious object.”
I have no reason to question that you acted appropriately in the situations to which you refer. But don’t you believe that the fact that this person was in a public area, during regular business hours suggests it might have been handled differently than the situations you describe?
I think that unfortunately I’m responsible for mentioning the wires in the play-doh back on page one of this thread, and I apologize for it. I remember the first news account I read on www.thebostonchannel.com said the wires were in the play-doh, but they updated the article multiple times that day, and I cannot find the original, so I have no cite for that. Clearly all later articles mention that she was holding the play-doh in her hands, and do not mention wires in it (the play-doh). The Globe reported that she had been wearing the shirt for several days though, so it wasn’t something she threw together just to show her boyfriend.
"Outside Simpson’s dormitory yesterday, a student who identified himself as a friend of Simpson’s wore a circuit board the size of a notebook around his neck.
“All tech men wear circuit boards,” he said. He refused to give his name."
Glad to see the current undergrads have a sense of history.
Although news articles have used the term “Career Day,” a more accurate description would be “a career fair.” There are a number of career fairs during the school year at MIT. Companies that hire Course VI (computer science/electrical engineering) majors are very over-represented at career fairs and generally have the coolest goodies to hand out to prospective interviewees. Course VIers I knew would attend career fairs whether they were job-hunting or not, just for the loot.
Many MIT students will wear the same clothes to a career fair that they would wear to class, including but not limited to hoodies, jeans, boas, fishnets, pajamas, kilts, or All Black. The hiring companies want to see only two things: Brass Rat (or Tin Rat) and resume.
My college had plenty of career fairs too and I used to purposely dress in graphic t-shirts because everyone else wore suits or business casual-type stuff.
Who stands out in your mind? The 50 similar guys in suits, or the kid wearing a t-shirt with “geek” stenciled on the front?
Of course, career fairs at my school were pretty idiotic because the recruiters were never hiring for specific jobs, they were just there to collect resumes.
The kid with “geek” stenciled on the front of his shirt would certainly remain in my memory. As a person who did not know how to dress when looking for a job.
It might be viewed as cool and creative in certain fields, but not in mine. I’d not give someone like that a second thought unless his resume showed that he was an absolutely fantastic candidate and far above anyone else who showed up that day. If he was pretty similar to everyone else, it’s the round file for him.