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Florida Teen Expelled For Doing Science

TragicMonkey said:
All my schools cared about was were we doing drugs or having sex on school grounds. If I'd started setting off explosions they'd probably have asked me to move them indoors because they'd like an excuse to get a building younger than 1940.
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This is interesting to me as I sit in a classroom built in the 20s.
 
When I was a kid I made deadly chlorine gas. (Pretty easy, actually. Just mix Clorox and ammonia.) No, I didn't know what I was doing, just playing around with stuff under the sink. Got a small whiff of it and thought I was going to die. (I could have.) Good thing the cops weren't around.

TragicMonkey said:
In a related case, a nine year old dropped a Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke. He's been sent to Guantanamo after extensive interrogation, and thirty other nine year olds have been rounded up as suspected collaborators. The school has been razed to the ground and the earth sown with salt so another may not grow there. Drones have been deployed in geostationary orbit to monitor the site and react with deadly force should anyone venture into the Forbidden Zone.
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Its the only way to be safe.
 
newyorkguy said:
I can't believe the "system" is treating this girl (she's sixteen, right?) as a felon. This is the whole move nowadays to criminalize conduct that, not all that long ago, would've been treated as mere stupidity.

Why when I was a kid... :)
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WTF, what was her sentence?

Has she finished her trial? I can't believe someone took a bomb to school and another person just thinks it is no big deal.
 
Calling it a "scientific experiment" without further details sounds like an excuse more than a description. There are scientific experiments that would send you to jail (and should).

If it's innocent curiosity, then that ought to be taken into consideration as a mitigating factor, but that's all it's good for.
 
What I don't understand is
"She is a good kid," said principal Ron Pritchard. "She has never been in trouble before. Ever."

The principal told 10 News, "She told us everything and was very honest. She didn't run or try to hide the truth. We had a long conversation with her."
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So far okay. Suspension? Given the current level of paranoia, okay I see that.

Who escalated it by calling the police?
 
Dancing David said:
I can't believe someone took a bomb to school and another person just thinks it is no big deal.
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It was an eight-ounce water bottle.

How do these things get out-of-control? Dancing David just answered that one very nicely.

Someone takes a bomb to school and someone else thinks it's no big deal.

Seriously? :rolleyes:
 
beren said:
This is interesting to me as I sit in a classroom built in the 20s.
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Was the classroom meant to last, though? One school I attended was built in 1940 as a fast temporary makeshift to last ten years or so when they'd build a good one. By 1992 it was not in the best of shape. Silent Hill has less rust present.
 
Tricky said:
When I was a kid I made deadly chlorine gas. (Pretty easy, actually. Just mix Clorox and ammonia.)
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To get chlorine, you have to mix bleach with an acid. Ammonia is not an acid. Mixing bleach with ammonia can give you chloramines, but that's something else.
 
Travis said:
I'm not understanding why she has to serve prison time for this. Was there any indication she was trying to harm someone?

I know from personal experience you can always count on a school administrator to do the wrong thing. Overreacting to things to placate idiot parents is just one of them.
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School admin almost certainly had no choice.
 
Dr. Keith said:
I can't imagine what the hardware clerk thought we were going to do with those short threaded sections of pipe and matching end caps, but I doubt they ever considered it would include black powder and waterproof fuses.
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Congrats on still being among the living!!!!:D:jaw-dropp
 
newyorkguy said:
What I don't understand is


So far okay. Suspension? Given the current level of paranoia, okay I see that.

Who escalated it by calling the police?
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The resource officer who actually was first responder is a police officer from the local PD whose assignment is in that school (sometimes split between two schools). That is how it works here in sunny FL. Ours at the school I was from were good with the kids and the teachers. BUT the call to arrest is in their hands so.......
 
Vermonter said:
Trying her as an adult seems a little severe.
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RANT! This is my biggest pet peeve about our legal system. How in the world can you try a child as an adult? Since we're making her an adult, can we change her gender too and try her as a man? As an illegal immigrant? Hey, let's try her as a Filipino and do the whole trial in Tagalog. Can we try her as a gay Chinamen who lives in Vegas? Hey, let's be really tough on her and try her as a two-time felon in a three-strike state. With an evil mustache. So annoying.
 
fuelair said:
The resource officer who actually was first responder is a police officer from the local PD whose assignment is in that school (sometimes split between two schools). That is how it works here in sunny FL. Ours at the school I was from were good with the kids and the teachers. BUT the call to arrest is in their hands so.......
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She put some household chemicals in an eight-ounce water jar and it created a chemical reaction and some smoke. How does that constitute, "possession / discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device?"

I think that's too much. Here in New York, if it was subject to police action at all, it would probably be "Reckless Endangerment," which is a misdemeanor.

Hopefully the charges will be dropped. And they'll let her back into school after a moderate suspension.
 
To be fair - she lied, and it isn't doing her any favors. What happened was this:

Some other kid told her it would be so cool to try mixing these things up (it was something they'd seen on Youtube) and that she should bring the stuff to school and do it. Wilmot had *no idea* what would happen by mixing these things. She thought it would cause smoke - but from what I'm able to tell, there is no reason she should've thought that.

She was showing off for some other kids when she mixed the bottle and set it down. The principal was nearby, heard the bang, thought it was a firecracker and went over to see what was up.

Wilmot told the principal that she was testing something out for the science fair. The science teacher was then contacted, and had no knowledge of that.

So - leaving science out of it (because it wasn't really about science) what happened is that some kid pressured her into doing a cool kid show off thing, and she didn't think it through. Funnily enough, I've had this experience myself and was also expelled. I was the first (and only) student in alternative school honors classes.
 
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