Kiera Wilmot, student who caused small explosion, won't face charges

I am personally aware of two FL elementary cases one where a student was charged for throwing a deadly missle, which was a paper ball, and the other a boy kissed a girl on the school playground and was charged with sexual harassment. I wish I could say I am joking...

Was this before, or after, the Columbine school shootings in 1999 and the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001?

Edit: I'd like to add that I have moved back to New York (where I am from). My girlfriend is moving in January. Fuck Florida.

In a case like this, they would have a whole bunch of news articles to go on. It is likely to show up on Google for quite some time.

Regardless of all that, the charges are completely over the top. Community service, detention, suspension, sure. But the county was trying to charge her with a felony! I did stuff like that in junior high too, because I wanted to see the reaction. I learned from it though, and grew, because I didn't become an instant criminal and have my entire life ruined.

Congratulations, now we just put another young person into the system that strips away the chance to succeed and condemns her, for life, to one childhood mistake.

Let's keep in mind: this incident, where no one was injured or harmed in the slightest, is being punished infinitely more severely than destroying the entire world financial system has been. Because, hey, poor black girl in Florida.

Interestingly, of all your links, not one caused even the slightest injury or slightest property damage. Injuries seem to be rather rare (and plastic shrapnel would lose velocity within a couple of feet).

Did people get hurt? No.

Was she doing it to hurt people? No.

Was she doing it for attention? No.

She was doing it out of curiosity. She doesn't deserve to be treated like a criminal.

We must look at this in terms of mens rea.

She needs a stern talking to, and probably at least a suspension from school. If they really want to escalate this to an expulsion, fine, but criminal consequences? Probation? Jail? Completely ridiculous.

Like there aren't enough actual criminals to prosecute.

You go be a 17 year old kid who's never been in trouble before and let's see how tough you are in an interview room with a few cops for a few hours.

Do you have citations to show that this was a bigger problem now then it was 10/20/30/40 years ago? Plenty of folks blew shit up during my day.

she later admitted someone told her how and encouraged her to do it

Link? I hadn't head this and 5 minutes of Googling hasn't turned anything up.

15 years ago, the grocery stores in my home town wouldn't sell The Works to teenagers.

You're completely ignoring the context and scale. She put some household chemicals in a soda bottle that caused a minor explosion. You're attempting to compare that to highly controlled biological weapons.

Do you really think it's justified to charge her with a felony?

No, lots of public commentary is condemning her for what she did but not want to see her entire future destroyed by federal conviction. Even if she's acquitted it's traumatic and destructive.

It's the kind of thing that could have been dealt with entirely within the school.

If you want to 'see what happens' with anthrax, then by all means you should study its properties at your desk at work--inside a laboratory--with safeguards in place.

And if you want to see what happens when you combine two chemicals in a science class, then by all means. I think students should be able to reasonably assume that the safeguards are in place. Because if we're giving our children materials to build the equivalent of a pipe bomb in science class, then that is our fault. We're the adults. We bring the safeguards, and they bring the scientific curiosity.

And by the way, a discussion of recklessly carrying out science is independent of a discussion of whether an act can be scientific in nature.

I blew up a bag of Oxygen/Acetylene on my school's football field. No malicious intent, can you think of a safer place to do it? I couldn't.

>Or perhaps I could study the inhalant properties of anthrax powder at my desk at work,

That's not even close to the same thing, but perhaps you should.

To add another person into the equation, consider Fritz Haber. He invented a process to synthesize ammonia on commercial scales cost effectively. In doing so he made explosives and gun powder far more economical, but also fertilizer. His work is responsible for a significant escalation in the efficiency and lethality of warfare (he also pioneered chemical warfare, as an aside) but also for feeding roughly half of the entire population of Earth at this point.

That's the nature of science, it's not easy it's not safe it's not without risk, it's not without moral quandaries. The way to attack these problems is not to try to neuter intellectual curiosity, to replace everything in a chemistry set with water, to replace tools with their nerf equivalents, to put people in jail when they venture too close to danger. The correct way is to ensure that people learn from their mistakes, and to make sure that people acquire a sense of what sorts of things tend to be dangerous and how to be properly prepared for handling those situations, or, when warranted, avoiding them.

The same lessons apply to using computers. It's simply not possible to have a robust curiosity about programming, systems, or computing in general without acquiring dangerous knowledge. And it's extremely unlikely for folks to go through their formative years of learning these things without one or more excursions into dangerous behavior.

You or your friends didn't do anything destructive in high school and get away with it? I did...

> But officers did arrest a group of teenagers at the end of January for making and setting off Drano bombs in an open space off Palmer Drive.

Let me be clear: mishandling one of these devices can blind you and remove limbs, and even if you buy the "I'm doing a science experiment" angle, she's doing it without training or safety considerations. This is a safety issue, not a science-hating issue, and there have been many charged and convicted before this young lady. I hate that we absolutely cannot have an objective conversation about this.

[1]: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/bottle-bomb-warning-goes-out-t...