Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed just wanted to show off his cool invention: a clock he had made from spare parts salvaged from home.  He had planned on showing it to his engineering teacher, and maybe even getting a pat on the back. Instead he got cuffed with his hands behind his back.

It seems that school officials at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, found the device to be suspicious. After plugging it into an outlet, the device started to make noise, and so his English teacher confiscated the case it was in. A few hours later he was pulled from class and questioned by the school principle and resource officer. Police officially retained and handcuffed Ahmed, saying his invention looked like a bomb. They finally figured out it was a clock and let him go, but the school refused to reconsider a 3 day suspension.

Many are calling this incident racist, and in the wake of it all, Ahmed has received numerous invites from sympathetic people eager to atone for the school’s sins, including technology companies like Facebook and the White House itself.  Though Muslim phobia may have played a role, anyone who follows this type of school arrest knows this wouldn’t be the first time a child was arrested for stupid reasons. Spit wads, bringing a butter knife to cut a birthday cake, and farting too much have gotten white kids arrested, so I don’t think Ahmed was unique in this regard.

I guess the lesson is this: build a strange invention that freaks out your teachers, and maybe you can be invited to the White House too!