The headline writers at Yahoo News would like to remind you that women don’t belong in engineering school September 21, 2007 zuzu Headline: MIT coed with fake bomb ‘art’ arrested.
I thought that they were reminding us that you don’t go to MIT to get an art degree. The whole thing just reminds me that there is a vast difference between intelligent and wise.
Isn’t that an AP headline? I thought we discovered through YahoophotosofKatrinalootersgate that Yahoo is just autorepackaging AP and Reuters content much of the time. On this occasion, “by GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer” and the AP logo make me think it’s not Yahoo’s content.
It’s not their content, but I think Yahoo writes their own headlines. Which is why I specified the headline writers. Plus, GLEN JOHNSON called her a student.
I guess they didn’t have to point out she was a woman, but I think your interpretation is a little strong.
Right. It’s the word “coed” that’s the problem here. I didn’t think that word had been used un-ironically since Animal House. Also, can I just say, people are morons? No, the student shouldn’t have worn her circuit-board jacket to the airport, but for it to be a “fake bomb” there would have to be intent. There was absolutely no intent to make people think it’s a bomb; she’s just a nerdy arty girl who likes to make designy things out of motherboards. Flaky, maybe, but not malicious. I can’t believe they’re charging her. See: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html
You should see the thread on Metafilter, where anyone who gets detained for fifteen minutes at by airport security is usually proclaimed an innocent victim of an egregious miscarriage of American justice. But this student? She’s a “cunt,” a “twit”, a “stoopit bitch,” “dumb as a brick”, at best a “girl” engaging in “juvenile attention-getting” behavior.
Betsy, I think it was the white plasticine that got security nervous. Wearing a shirt with wires coming out of something that could be C4 is likely to get the result that it got. I just figure that she is pulling a stunt to get known. Yes, the term ‘coed’ deserves to be buried deep and not used in public by polite people.
From what I’ve heard (from people who know her) she wears this sweatshirt all the time and was just picking someone up at the airport en route to an engineering event, so she probably wasn’t thinking about going through security, let alone trying to pull some attention-getting stunt.
Women are very rarely terrorists. I can only think of the Baader-Meinhof gang and the ex-Weather Underground Northwestern Law professor. Thus, her sex was newsworthy. The headline writer probably thought that most Americans would assume that an MIT student was male, and “coed” takes up half the space of “nerdette,” and 1/4 the space of “female student.”
The play-doh was given away by companies at the career fair where she wore her led shirt to show that she could make circuits. So she still had it when she went to the airport and was playing with it while she waited for the plane. It’s not a stunt or a hoax, just an over-reaction (again) by the boston pd.
FYI, this is the AP headline (as Cecily brought up), and not just the Yahoo headline. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2-8Em1L5oDKpru3KXghmCB32tCw
The picture doesn’t show a “computer circuitboard;” it shows what is colloquially known as a “breadboard,” used for making prototype circuits by hand. Sorry to be a pedant. Anyway, yeah, coed is archaic. I think MIT is at about 40% female at this point.
it’s just… it was a circuit board. and the back of her shirt said ‘socket to me.’ not exactly a political statement of any kind… o.O and i second that, henry. i’m just glad they didn’t shoot her.
also when i first heard about it on MSNBC they were like, ‘A STUDENT HAD A FAKE BOMB *STRAPPED TO HER*’ so i imagined it looked all ‘muslim terrorist-style’ or whatever and then i figured she was protesting something or making a statement if she had a fake bomb attached to her in what people figure to be the stereotypical style of muslim terrorists. it wasn’t even *that* exciting, man. :\
I’m kind of surprised they didn’t taser her for good measure. I lived in Boston as a young punky weirdo type, and I can tell you for sure if there’s one thing the Boston cops don’t like, it’s young punky weirdo types.
All I can say is thank God she wasn’t hurt. This could have gone very badly. Which is what annoys me so much about the coverage. I saw 4 stories on this, and the main point of every article was “My god, she could have been shot! YOU MOTHERFUCKERS BETTER NOT TRY ANYTHING LIKE THIS.” Post-9-11 world my aunt fanny. We got introduced to what every other country in the world deals with all the time, and most of them haven’t dissolved into a fear mongering police state. …but then I think the WTC attack was an inside job… just like the 7-11 bombing in the UK. So what do I know.
Simpson showed “a total disregard to understand the context of the situation she is in, which is an airport of post-9/11,” Yes, she totally forgot that America has gone halfway mad with fear. She had it coming. [/sarcasm] It’s funny, but after the American response to 9/11, I was really surprised at the UK response to 7/7. They were angry, but were calm and trying to get back to their lives. There’s even this funny meme that went around that it was because the English solve their woes with tea: “Rainy weather? Tea. Lost your job? Tea. Terrorist attack on London, bringing the city to a grinding halt? Tea, dammit!”
Ugh, Zuzu, this isn’t about sexism. This is about the stupid war on terror and how they can’t tell the difference between and innocent geek and a terrorist. Besides, she’s just as non-white as she is non-male, so if you really, truly want to make the sexism argument, you should make the racism argument, too. My husband, who went to MIT, had a very different response. His response was about how the smart, geeky kids are misunderstood and how society rejects their intelligence because it scares them. I think he’s at least partially right about that.
Honestly, it really wasn’t the brightest thing to wear, but if there’s one thing I know from going to nerd school and being in gifted classes all my life, it’s that nerds don’t always have the most common sense. It’s unfortunate that she didn’t have a friend to say, “Aren’t you going to the airport? I insist that you change, because we live in a climate of fear,” or if she did, that she didn’t listen.
Agree totally with zuzu: MIT coed = silly girl doing stuff she shouldn’t. I’m an MIT alum, the place is not ideal, but getting close to the 50-50 mark for undergrads (after decade long efforts at affirmative action, btw, going to high schools to get girls to apply). Girls belong at MIT, this girl certainly does, and the Boston police should know better given the huge student population in Boston. The MIT police tend to see their role as protecting the students from the Boston/Cambridge/Massachusetts police: there is an understanding that they in fact won’t shoot us for doing weird nerdy stuff. Boston is also the place where the police killed a young woman using “non-lethal” weapons after one of the Red Sox games. Instead of helping her, the policemen stood by and watched as she bled to death. It was 20 minutes before the ambulance reached her.
I graduated from MIT almost 20 years ago, and I don’t recall anyone on campus referring to female students as coeds.In fact, in all my years at universities, I can’t remember anyone using “coed” to refer to a student. Cassie is right about the MIT police. As long as students won’t get hurt, the police seem to allow various “hacks”.
Well, THAT explains it. I thought this guy described on Feministing, who didn’t want to date an MIT girl was just an asshole, but he was really just trying to avoid the police. /snark.
They have a real opportunity here not just to destroy a promising future, but to keep a woman out of the boy’s gadget club.
Well, no news here. Any woman that went to engineering school knows that there’s still quite a lot of people that think women don’t belong in engineering school.
The whole thing is fricking idiotic. The fact that her sex is even relevant has everything to say about the patriarchy, circa 2007. The fact that a kid in a light-up sweatshirt at the airport was confronted with guns and arrested has everything to say about the police state, circa 2007. Wait. Those are really two sides of the same coin, aren’t they?
Why do they keep calling it a “prank” or a “hoax”? It seems to me, for it to be either of those things, she would have had intent. She would have thought, “Hey, guess what would be awesome…” After seeing the pictures, it seems to me that it’s essentially one of those Christmas sweaters that light up, except that it’s homemade so the “mechanics” of it are a little more obvious. Didn’t look like any kind of bomb to me. It also seems to me that she was just waiting at the airport, not deliberately trying to attract attention. Also, I always thought co-ed was just a general word for “college students” but that explains why the only context I’ve heard the noun is in those “Sexy hot coeds take it off!” commercials.
I always thought co-ed was just a general word for “college students” but that explains why the only context I’ve heard the noun is in those “Sexy hot coeds take it off!” commercials. Yeah, count me in that boat. I never realized “coed” meant female. Silly me.
I’m angry that everyone is calling it a prank or a fake bomb. It was wires on a shirt. And she wasn’t even flying!! She was picking someone up! Oh my.
Yeah, count me in that boat. I never realized “coed” meant female. Silly me. Does that explain comment #23? Because you were really out of line there.
Besides, she’s just as non-white as she is non-male, so if you really, truly want to make the sexism argument, you should make the racism argument, too. While I think that probably had a lot to do with the police’s response, the headline didn’t say “MIT non-white with fake bomb arrested.” If it did, then a post complaining about why the headline felt the need to point out her skin tone would be appropriate. But that’s not what the headline writers felt the need to draw attention to. I notice from the various photos with the various articles about this I’ve read that she, at least on that morning, was kind of androgynous-looking? So I’m wondering if the police didn’t think “Swarthy Male with a BOMB!” and jump all over her.
I never realized “coed” meant female. Silly me. Oh. Well never mind my last comment then. Guess I should read the entire thread before commenting.
Slightly off-topic, but speaking as a brand-new alum, the gender ratio for MIT undergraduates has been around 50:50 for years now, and no, girls still aren’t called co-eds. The graduate programs are unfortunately still more heavily male, although that’s slowly changing too. (And no, at this point, it’s not due to affirmative action-like programs; I’ve heard from the Admissions Office that female applicants, though fewer, tend to be better-qualified, and indeed, tend to receive better grades during their time at MIT.) The initial response – check out a weird electronic device – was reasonable, and yeah, Star would’ve been better off avoiding bringing a breadboard to the airport. It’s the macho chest-thumping “she’s lucky she’s in a cell, not a morgue” and the continued media mis-representation of the device as a “fake bomb” and a “hoax” that’s disgusting. The initial mistake was entirely understandable, but trying to justify it by spreading fear… ugh.