By Angelie Yglesias
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.
— President Obama (@POTUS44) September 16, 2015
“So, I guess everyone knows that I’m the person that built a clock and got into a lot of trouble for it.”
Those are the words of Ahmed Mohamed, 14-year-old aspiring engineer from Irving, Texas, who was arrested earlier this week for bringing a handmade clock to school at a press conference today.
Earlier today, Mohamed rose to social media fame. According to Dallas News, Mohamed, who loves robotics and electronics, made the clock out of a metal pencil case and brought it to school. Mohamed built the clock to “impress [his] teacher.” However, it got him arrested.
“They arrested me and told me I committed a crime of a hoax bomb – a fake bomb,” Mohamed told WFAA reporters earlier today.
According to Texas law, one may be arrested for having a fake bomb if one “knowingly manufactures, sells, purchases, transports, or possesses a hoax bomb with intent to use” or intentionally causes panic with said hoax bomb. As far as all reports, from the school district, police department, and Mohamed himself, the clock was not shown to anybody but his English teacher, who reported it later in the day.
In a statement, the Irving Independent School district says that students and staff are asked to “immediately report if they observe any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior”. Police Chief Larry Boyd claimed that the clock itself was “a homemade experiment”, but that this was an era where “you can’t take things like [a homemade clock] to school.”
Between Mohamed’s arrest and the social media frenzy that started afterwards, many important figures began showing their support for the teen. President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and hundreds of thousands more are tweeting and posting their support for Mohamed. “Cool clock, Ahmed,” Obama tweeted. “Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
The teen later confirmed in a press conference that he would be visiting the White House for their annual Astronomy Night.
But Mohamed’s troubles aren’t over yet. While the charges have officially been dropped, the teen is still suspended from school until Thursday, despite approximately 370,000 tweets with the hashtag #IStandWithMohamed plus Presidential support.
“I will have to say that I really want to go to MIT and I’m thinking about transferring schools from MacArthur to any different school.” Mohamed said in a press conference.
