Here's one reference point:

http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N30/sodiumcasedismissed.html

MIT students' pyrotechnics fun caused five people to suffer chemical burns (including three paramedics treating the first two). They were punished with community service and fines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_Cash_scandal

"The "Kids for cash" scandal unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were accused of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought before their courts to increase the number of inmates in the detention centers.

For example, Ciavarella sentenced children to extended stays in juvenile detention for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, and shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart."

Not saying this is what happened here, but a plausible hypothesis.

If I were the sentencing judge I'd add every sentence given by those judges to the kids, double it and make all involved serve them. With no parole. In general population.

You are right.

This was not an over-reaction of a reported explosive device (made with caustic acids and bases - maybe a mix of bleach, ammonia, drain cleaner, etc) going off on school grounds in this climate of fear after the Boston bombings.

This can be more easily explained away by the hate and bigotry brewing in this white school and this white police force. I mean, they are white, she is not. Nothing more to say here.

P.S., nothing is likely to come of this once the facts are brought up in court... http://www.wtsp.com/news/topstories/article/312750/250/Stude...

There are 300MM people in this country, things like this will happen regardless of your race and color.

Your conjecture is an embarrassment to this community.

Maybe you meant to reply to the GP?

Not because they were enforced in this case, but because of the countless times they were probably threatened and not enforced. These rules don't enforce justice, they leave justice up to the arbitrary will of an administrator.

My school has a rule that states "If a phone is seen out, you will get 20 lunch detentions." And yet most of the teachers do not enforce the rule. In fact, here I am typing a response on Hacker News. Yet if a teacher were to not like me, he/she could single out me and only me and give me lunch detentions. This may only be a simple example, but it scales all the way up to serious offenses and the higher level administrators as well.

"You seem like a nice kid, I'll let you off this time"

It becomes even worse when bias and prejudice are involved.

I believe laws are best wielded against people you don't like.

There are so many laws, so broad, so contradictory, every one of us is doing something wrong at any point in time.

So enforcement is just a matter of choosing how to punishing your enemies.

Lets have preschoolers who throw Lego thrown in jail while we're about it.

Honestly, this "zero tolerance" just ruins lives. You've just taken an A grade student who could be contributing to society and possibly put them into a life of poverty and disadvantage. That's great for society.

This statement is actually not absurd. Well, actually, it is an absurdity, but it's also an accurate description of reality.

I was reading a comment by someone (I believe a law professor and criminal defense lawyer) who rode along with a highway patrolman in the US. They played a game, where the officer would follow a car, and the officer would win if he could name a legitimate traffic offense committed by the car, for which he could pull the driver over if he was so inclined.

The officer won every time, usually within well under a mile.

There are so many laws, and they are so complex, that just about anyone is probably guilty of something if you just look hard enough. Only the thin paper shield of the Constitution (in particular 4th and 5th amendments) is about the only thing that stands between just about anybody in the US and prison.

For more, see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

Anything in the preceding comments which seems ridiculous has been introduced by the concept of "zero tolerance", which precludes common sense.

Zero means zero. If the rules are enforced as written - arguably as intended - this is what you get. The preceding comments just take the concept to its logical conclusion.

Made of pleather.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=3758286&page=1#.UY...

http://attleboro.patch.com/articles/student-suspended-for-bu...

Really? Citation needed, I think.

Or you could give personal witness of seeing a case that did not make it on the news. But no citation.

Let's assume just for the sake of argument that every actor from their own perspective is reasonable.

The problem is that a small group of parents are at the top of the "food chain." These parents are self-selected and therefore have a more overbearing personality (i.e. helicopter parents) than average.

So these parents sit in PTA meetings or similar and pass more and more rules based on the latest moral panic (e.g. guns, knives, hairstyles, video games, healthy food, etc). They aren't trying to strike a "balance" to find what is reasonable they're trying to keep the kids safe even at the cost of everything and everyone else.

Now you might say "but isn't the principal in charge?!" well, no, not really. I mean the principal is in charge of certain things but if they fail to keep the PTA happy they will be replaced by someone who will. Child safety (as the PTA will spin it) is one of those areas where principals have very little freedom.

With this specific incident in mind, even if the principal AND the teachers thought it was crazy to both exclude and arrest her, they might have effectively zero say in the matter.

We did have to miss out on recess the next day thou...

Stupid, draconian laws enforced by ridiculous school administrators. Zero-tolerance laws are illogical because they make an attempt to pass-off guilt, logic, and responsibility by simply saying "perform any act bordering on this description and we have no choice but to come down on you with this one-size-fits all penalty."

They are willing to screw up a kid's life because they are unwilling to use logic. Bringing a gun into a classroom != having a pocket knife in the center console of your car, but they are treated as if they are the same act.

http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=2...

Imagine losing your right to vote, forever, because of this incident.

If the kid brought these chemicals to school to conduct the experiment, then I would definitely venture that there is fault with the kid here, but hardly felony territory and questionable expulsion territory. It really depends on the severity of the incident and the amount of prior knowledge the kid had about the safety. The severity should take into account both the size of the explosion and whether or not students and teachers were at risk when this experiment was conducted. Most kids who know something might be a bit dangerous or uncertain at least have the common sense to conduct these experiments in places where people are unlikely to experience bodily harm. Everyone I knew as a kid that did something like this (including myself) knew enough to guess the maximum magnitude of potential damage and made sure to conduct such experiments far enough from others. When you hear about kids playing with hardcore stuff like a homemade pipe bomb, it's usually a rural or suburban kid that goes way out into the woods to conduct their experiments. When it is something minor like strapping a bunch of Estes model rocket engines together and lighting them, they know enough to have everyone stand far enough back and behind cover before starting the fuse for the experiment. Expulsion really is only merited if humans were actually legitimately at risk.

They don't need to have knowledge of the experiment to be culpable, just knowledge that these chemicals were made available without adult supervision. Lab/chemical safety is no joke and I would bet that it was lax or non-existent oversight of these chemicals that prompted this. Kids will be kids. They have limited knowledge of the consequences of their actions, especially when chemistry is involved.

The best situation is one where chemistry can be taught safely in schools by teachers with enough knowledge and good sense to provide a safe environment. The next best alternative is to provide a limited subset of chemistry equipment and chemicals that cannot cause an explosion or serious harm, but still provide educational value. Only when neither of those two conditions can be met, should you remove lab chemistry from an educational environment. This is certainly not desirable, but still better than providing an unsafe environment for chemistry.

She's 16, she's not a child.

Let's do it?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culpability

But also, my thinking is that recently the US seems to want to trample down many "criminals" for basically downloading things that someone regrets them downloading. I worry about a future where DA's are overzealous about going after people without any mens rea and/or well after the victims of a crime have expressed no interest in continuing the case. Since, in the US, jails are intended to punish instead of rehabilitate and having a felony conviction takes away many of your rights I think they need to be far more careful who they level charges against.

I know practically nothing of the charges or pertinent laws here mind you.

Even an American adult, in most states, can make a felony disappear with some effort and the cooperation of the convicting judge. In other states, it becomes a charge but no conviction is recorded from the company's perspective, so you can say "no, I've never been convicted of a felony."

(I'm a felon with extensive experience in this area.)

Typical BigCos get a standard background on you (these are measured in dozens of dollars), and any further investigation that involves a human being is reserved for a very, very rare candidate. HR and operations are expensive at scale.

Since everybody rational considers this news item ridiculous, I think we can safely say this girl will be alright. The expulsion is the thing she'll have to work around, but even a felony conviction is not a life-ender. Many companies specifically hire felons because they're a tax break if filed properly.

Entirely false.

I can't be the only one here to have passed this process. I've done it a couple times. This vaguely resembles my military security clearance some decades ago in that my Army CO never had any idea I got picked up by the cops for truancy after skipping out of gym class in my sophomore high school year, but the clearance guy knew, didn't really care (I mean, come on, really?), and issued my clearance and that credential is good enough for my CO not to personally investigate my police record.

Needless to say the pass fail criteria provided to the 3rd party doesn't include things like "Is the candidate a jew?". They ARE often dumb, but not that dumb.

Usually it involves a lot of verification of resume "facts" like if the candidate claims no criminal record but a simple glance at a public facebook feed shows all manner of talk about his extensive time in jail, the red flag gets raised. No need to tell the company what church he attends, just warn them to take a second (first?) look at the criminal background report.

There wasn't a news article about me so I don't have to worry about being Googled. I do feel bad for the girl because of that. However, so far employers have found my story amusing so I'm convinced that high school hijinks affect job prospects terribly.

Maybe "real life" immediate consequences but I can't help a strong sense of frustration at the "system" even more than sympathy for this one individual given the irony.

How Kafkaesque is that? "We made these rules just so that we can punish you if you don't follow them!"

There's really two issues. The first is the hard core fascist way of thinking where anything not compulsory is forbidden and anything not forbidden is compulsory, so her mistake was doing anything on school grounds with even a minute quantity of creativity. School is the place where human spirit is intentionally by design ground down, turn them into uncreative uneducated automatons so they can appreciate tightening bolts on the factory assembly line for 12 hours a day. Oh wait that's been obsolete for decades. Oh well who cares there's money to be made doing it and metric goals to achieve and tests to teach to.

The second failure mode is its really pretty stupid, just generally speaking, to randomly mix stuff together, and randomly screwing around mixing stuff isn't chemistry, so lets be honest about what really happened, she read about how to blow stuff up in a fun mostly harmless manner and thought it would be fun to try at school, and it worked and was safe, but she got caught. Its mostly harmless so rather than convicting her of some kind of terrorism felony they showed some mercy (or the police properly and rightly told the school to F off) so her story is being rewritten with lots of randomness added. There may be some interaction with profound ignorance of chemistry on all sides of the story from the kid on up.

Link to police report: http://www.scribd.com/doc/138927259/Wilmot-Arrest

What is wrong with this world? It's understandable that this was dangerous, but they just destroyed this girl's future. First of all, they released her name to the public, second of all, this was a first offence, third, this wasn't an intentional bombing. It literally says, it was a science experiment gone wrong.

Did you read the part where she was creating _explosives_ on school property? Especially within two weeks of a major bombing involving household materials!?

That is an allegation, what's your evidence? She enjoys the privilege of assumption of innocence as well as a trial, yet you've rushed to judgment based on what?

I suppose based on the fact the kid mixed chemicals and sealed the chamber? I've done the same, multiple times. Never was I surprised at the result.

I suppose OP could be correct and my racist views led me to believe her intentions were the same as mine when it was me mixing chemicals and sealing the chamber, somehow I doubt it.

I am just making this post to point out that what she was doing COULD have been dangerous or fatal, it just wasn't.

Fortunately plastic containers will fail long before the buildup of pressure becomes too powerful. But in general, that kind of explosion does and can kill.

The most she deserves in this case is a rap on the knuckle. I'd say not even that - maybe a gentle talking to - "be inquisitive, explore ... but be a little more careful."

What is ignorant is the fact that reddit/hn is willing to completely ignore the fact that the intent was to mix chemicals and make an explosive device. Ask any school administrator if a student of any race would be punished for that.

Look at it from an administrators perspective, they are legally obligated to maintain a safe environment for children. If another student was injured it would be their job/income/family on the line.

But I'd like to know what chemicals were in the bottle before going too far into a conversation on this, as that defines how dangerous her experiment was. There are certain household chemicals that you do not want to see in a reaction that generates a small explosion and smoke. Some that will burn the lungs severely or cause blindness.

I doubt it was a decision based on race. She's obviously a "good" kid, and the cops and admin know it.

What's bullshit is that she was doing a very low-risk "experiment". It doesn't really sound like a real experiment, just a curious kid trying something out. Or at worst, the kind of harmless prank everyone used to do. But it was harmless, and she was probably just doing it for fun, or because she was curious.

Oh, I have no doubt she was just trying something out, but it's hardly guaranteed to be harmless. Worst case, you might mix something like bleach and ammonia, and kill half the school.

Can't tell without further details, but the fact that she was surprised is scary. I wouldn't expel her, though, just give her a long and serious talking-to.

Wow, alarmist much? Two seconds of googling suggests that it makes chloramine, which isn't exactly mustard gas ( http://chemistry.about.com/od/toxicchemicals/a/Mixing-Bleach... ).

As for not knowing what the mixture will do--well, there's a really obvious way to find out, right? We're all about TDD here.

No way would that kill half the school. Might hospitalize some people in the room, but that's the worst realistic scenario.

The school officials might know it, but I'm not so sure about the cops. It seems she was expelled due to the school system's zero tolerance policy. What about the felony charges? That was a separate decision by the cops or the District Attorney. I doubt violating a school policy requires the filing of criminal charges.

Most school administrators, in my experience at least, seem to be zealots and jump at the chance to put students "in their place".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Crim...

The Wikipedia article cites the FBI's definition of a WMD, which includes rockets that contain more than 4 ounces of propellant. For comparison, an Estes D size rocket engine is less than a single ounce (~0.8oz). It also states that any rocket with an incendiary charge of more than one quarter ounce is a WMD, but if you actually read the statute and not Wikipedia's summary you'll read that the charge has to be a known explosive substance like C4 or ANFO, not something silly like Draino and aluminum foil or dry ice in a plastic bottle, unless there is a clear intention of causing harm, injury or death. Here's a video of 10 grams of C4, which is about a third of an ounce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdhuR2rJJIU

These definitions of a WMD aren't that crazy.

I can only imagine someone with evil enough intent to put a canister like that in one of those Glade "bathroom smelly" devices. In a public restroom, you'd be spreading death.