Stupid students activate Dept. of Homeland Security
Earlier today (well, yesterday) a suspicious bag was reported in Lawrence Hall by a stupid paranoid student, Junior Ben Reider. The ‘suspicious’ was a backpack padlocked to the bathroom stall by fellow student, Garret Soan Lon Len, for ‘safekeeping’.
DPS, EPD, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING?! WHAT?) responded to the call with bomb-sniffing dogs. In retrospect, it looks like an over reaction, but every false threat seems like an over reaction. Calling in DHS might be a bit much, but it’s that one time you under react to a real threat that it’s game over.
Turns out that there was nothing suspicious about the backpack…except for the fact that it was padlocked to a bathroom stall. Great going, Mr. Len, you really showed your mental prowess there in trying to keep your bag safe. Or were you just so damn lazy that you couldn’t carry it on, oh I don’t know, your BACK? Mr. Len is being charged with disorderly conduct, which holds a minimum fine of $255. I thought disorderly conduct was being a drunken douchebag bro and pushing people on the sidewalk in front of Taylor’s, but I guess leaving backpacks around constitutes a similar offense.
But it’s not all Mr. Len’s fault. How paranoid do you have to be, Mr. Reider, to automatically suspect that a backpack is a bomb? And just think for a moment, why the hell would anyone want to bomb Lawrence Hall? Well, maybe all the architects stuck there on Friday night in Studio…anyways, good job. You’ll forever be known as the College student who cried wolf. I think you should at least have the courtesy to offer to pay for half of the disorderly conduct fine.
The ODE has the rest of the story.
Disorderly conduct is what the cops charged me with after they shot me in the #*%@!. That charge is one of those amorphous things like “sustainability” that can apply to anything or nothing.
Eva:
That was my first thought when I started seeing people Twitter about this.
Yeah, locking a backpack to a bathroom rail with a weird note would be a little creepy anywhere else, but, in Lawrence Hall, wouldn’t people just understand it as the latest “conceptual art” project?
First off…this isn’t Tel Aviv Airport.
Secondly, it’s weird to padlock your shit in the bathroom.
That it was padlocked….seems strange enough to catch my attention. Still, calling DHS is probably a bit much. I don’t know. That guy should get at LEAST disorderly conduct for that shit.
Shit.
Charging the kid with disorderly conduct seems a bit much.
The ODE article says the bag had a sign on it that said “April Fools.” I probably would have reported it to, and I tend to think people overreact all the time. But agreed that the guy who put it there is a moron. As if people couldn’t just open it to take stuff out or cut through the straps to get it off the lock.
So does the ODE get credit for scooping this story? http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2009/05/06/News/Surfing.The.Streets-3737192.shtml
I think the response on Ben’s part was appropriate; after-all, you said, that one time you under-react is the one time it counts.
I’m more confused about the part about locking up a backpack. I don’t think that Lon (Len?) was trying to be a nuisance; rather, he probably just intended to safe-guard the backpack. Which leads me to my next question: How could you keep a backpack safe if its just locked to a stall? I mean, it has zippers … anyone could get into the contents of the pack even while it was still locked to the stall.
Dumb on so many levels…
This isn’t really stupid on Ben’s side but is stupid on Lon’s side. It’s this type of apathy about security that gets us into trouble. After all the news about leaving unattended packs and luggage, Lon did wrong. Ben acted correctly.
HLS and FBI reports show that terrorists are now leaning towards high impact soft targets. Mentioned in particular are schools. I work in HLS and am authoring a book on Security Apathy. It is just this type of example that I will feature in the book.
Barry
This just seems fucking stupid to me on so many different levels.
Who locks their backpack up in a place where other people shit? What about a bathroom seems like it’s, “as safe a place as any?” Pay no nevermind to the urine, fecal matter and vomit that could potentially spill out of a toilet all over your stuff. Jesus H.
I am pretty sure I hate everyone involved with this incident, especially the fucking big balled cop that had the nerve to write a disorderly conduct ticket to one of these asshole clowns and not the other.