Here’s an interesting article by Star Simpson that contains a good section on what it feels like to be arrested at age 19 in a country where prosecutors have a large range of crimes with which to charge a typical person.
Related:
- scroll to the end of this posting to see what it costs to defend a criminal case
It’s a disgrace MIT didn’t support Simpson when she was arrested. One phone call from an MIT official could have made the problem go away, and let her finish her education there.
The MIT administration has lost a cultural meme about supporting students who do things that are pretty clearly hacking in the original sense of the word, but end up causing some event which cheeses off ‘the authorities’ causing a huge overreaction. I’m not sure there are any hackers in the old MIT sense left in the administration, actually.
On the contrary, I think MIT made the right decision by not supporting Ms. Simpson. I don’t think MIT should be using its political capital to bailout students who make bad decisions. I do feel sorry for Ms. Simpson but the priority for MIT should be to protect the institution and the faculty. Students are important but they should not be allowed to outweigh the importance of the institution. In addition, I think it sends a bad signal to MIT students if they are shown by example that affiliation with MIT can be used as a get out of jail free card.
I guess we as a society have lost our way about what is “criminal” and what is just “not smart” and different. Young kids are arrested for taking toys guns to school. Young teenagers are killed for playing with toy guns. And wearing electronics lights I guess is not acceptable at airports. Sort of like taking a electronic clock to school. Both are terrorist acts according to hard ass police. This is just dumb dumb dumb and way over reacting by society in general.
No wonder we are not graduating many engineers. No way does a kid want to become an engineer after hearing about these events and the response provided by MIT.
MIT was playing a double game here – on the one hand they encourage (or at least tolerate) the East Campus subculture where all manner of weirdness is permitted and even celebrated, so this girl, living inside the MIT “bubble” naively failed to consider that going to the airport wired up like a Hollywood version of a suicide bomber would evoke any reaction – she was well within the norms of East Campus where even greater strangeness is an everyday occurrence and walking around wired up with blinking lights and a battery pack doesn’t get a second glance. And MIT hacker culture (at MIT a hack has a different meaning than elsewhere – a clever prank or practical joke) is celebrated and used as a recruiting tool – the police car on the roof, the stolen fiberglass cow (all part of famous MIT hacks ) – they are on exhibit in Stata. On the other hand, when something did happen, the bureaucrats threw her under the bus without a moment’s hesitation. The Mission Impossible ethos – “As always, should you .. be caught… the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.” Luckily, Star was made of stronger stuff than Aaron Swartz.
@Anon
How brave of you to stick up for people in authority.
@Izzie L.
To be fair, it is much easier for MIT to tolerate something that happens on its campus than something on the outside world.
going to the airport wired up like a Hollywood version of a suicide bomber would evoke any reaction…
This is an exaggeration of what she was wearing. Only an idiot would confuse what she was wearing with an explosive device. Unfortunately, some airport security personnel fall into this category.