This week traffic on the Downtown Connector in Atlanta, where I-75 and I-85 run together through town, was shut down for nearly three hours due to fear of a "suspicious package." As details came out, the package was described as a tube-shaped object. I heard one report say that a note on the object said, "slow motion, don't move until spring."
When I heard those words, everything added up for me. Atlanta is chock full of colleges and universities, from Georgia Tech and Georgia State to Morehouse, Spelman and Emory. And those institutions all have students engaged in learning not just by attending lectures, but by engaging in research and projects aimed at furthering their understanding of the world.
So, what does a suspicious tube-shaped object taped to the 14th Street Bridge have to do with a city loaded with students? Go below and I'll tell you if you haven't guess already.
Authorities soon discovered that the tube shaped object which they had detonated due to fear of what it could be was actually meant to be a student art project.
Described as a pin-hole camera, it was meant to capture the rising and setting of the sun over a quarter of the year. Sadly, the Georgia State University students who chose the 14th Bridge are now actually facing charges for the panic that resulted from someone noticing their camera.
As soon as I heard the words, "slow motion, don't move until spring" I realized that it was probably a student project. Those words and the small size of the "package" said, "student project" to me.
Rather than feel embarrassment for over-reacting and shutting down the north/south artery through town, authorities are holding these students responsible for what those authorities imagined. The students had no malicious intent, though perhaps a bad sense of geography, but that matters not. In our self-terrorizing society they must be held responsible for what we thought.
It's a sad thing that students cannot engage in a class project for fear of the most unsuspected repercussions. Should the professor have notified the authorities and gotten special certificates to be posted with the cameras? Should permission have been sought from the city of Atlanta before the cameras were placed? How much more circumspect must be all become before engaging in the most innocent of activities? Have terrorists imposed this on us, or are we now doing this to ourselves?
How can we possibly predict when our most innocent actions will be considered terrorism? Things are getting really weird, people.
http://www.ajc.com/...
http://www.ajc.com/...
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/...