Days after 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, which school officials mistakenly suspected was a bomb, the school has stated it would “certainly welcome” him back.
“We’re confident that we can continue to provide him with an excellent education,” a school spokeswoman told ABC News.
However, Ahmed’s family has decided he will not return to MacArthur. His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, stated Thursday that Ahmed will transfer out of the high school and that the family is “still deciding where he will go next,” according to The Associated Press.
Ahmed was arrested on Monday after teachers became suspicious of the homemade clock he brought to school.
“I built the clock to impress my teacher, but when I showed it to her, she thought it was a threat to her. It was really sad that she took the wrong impression from it,” Ahmed said in an interview this week.
He was subsequently arrested by police, taken from the school in handcuffs, and sent to a detention center before being released to his parents. Ahmed’s 17-year-old sister, Ayisha Mohamed, expressed her shock upon hearing about her brother’s arrest, saying her “heart just dropped.”
However, she noted, “It was a bad thing that turned into a blessing.”
Since the incident, Ahmed has gained significant media attention and public support. The hashtags #IStandWithAhmed and #EngineersForAhmed have trended widely on social media, garnering hundreds of thousands of posts and tweets.
Ahmed has also received support from prominent figures in politics, science, and technology.
Earlier this week, President Barack Obama extended an invitation to Ahmed to visit the White House, which the teen gratefully accepted.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged Ahmed to “stay curious and keep building.” Major tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Box, have reached out to him, and top astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein suggested that he is the “kind of student we want at places like MIT,” a university that Ahmed has called his “dream school.”
“Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed,” Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Wednesday.
Despite the widespread support for Ahmed, MacArthur High School has not issued an apology for his arrest and has defended the actions of its staff.
“We do stand behind what the teacher did,” the school spokeswoman told ABC News. She also noted that Ahmed’s punishment—a three-day suspension for bringing the clock to school—has not been lifted.
“Even though that particular item did not pose an immediately dangerous situation to the school, we cannot allow items on campus that can be perceived to pose a threat,” she said.
Earlier this week, The Verge published a memo allegedly sent out by the school to students’ parents.
In it, Principal Dan Cummings wrote that local police had responded on Monday to a “suspicious-looking item” on campus.
He encouraged parents to use “this opportunity to talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduct and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited.”
“This is a good time to remind your child how important it is to immediately report any suspicious items and/or suspicious behaviour,” he added.
Irving’s Mayor Beth Van Duyne defended the actions of law enforcement and school officials. “To the best of my knowledge, they followed protocol,” she wrote on Facebook.
