After being arrested and suspended for a homemade clock, Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old Muslim student at MacArthur high school has not only been invited back to school, but to Silicone Valley - several big-time tech companies, Google and Facebook among them, have welcomed him to visit.
Beforehand, Mohamed planned to start visiting other high schools.
"During Wednesday's news conference with Ahmed and his family, the teen told reporters that he has no desire to meet with MacArthur High School to further discuss the ordeal and has already made his decision to transfer to another school," according to ABC News.
The teen has gotten a lot of press as well as inspired a trending hashtag #IStandWithAhmed. This all began after Mohamed showed his homemade clock to students and staff members at MacArthur, and a concerned English teacher took notice. Believing the clock was a "bomb" she alerted the principal who contacted authorities. Mohamed was arrested and later released without being charged.
MacArthur high school has since expressed their approval of the English teacher who thought Mohamed had a bomb.
"We believe she was acting in the best interest for the safety of all 2,800 students at MacArthur High School," said a MacArthur representative according to MTV News. Mohamed, who is a Muslim, tried to explain to the authorities and his teachers that the device in question was simply a clock.
"I repeatedly told them, 'It's a clock,' but no matter how much I told them, I guess that's not a bold enough answer to them," according to ABC News.
MacArthur responded when in question by saying "We live in an age where you can't take things like that to school," according to Dallas News. "Of course we've seen across our country horrific things happen, so we have to err on the side of caution."
Though Mohamed was arrested and released, many people began tweeting in solidarity with Ahmed - including President Obama, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. "Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great," Obama tweeted Mohamed on September 16th.
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.
— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015
Several Silicon Valley tech companies reached out to Mohamed as well.
Google invited Mohamed to participated in its science fair, telling him: "Bring your clock!" Twitter offered Mohamed an internship, Foursquare told Mohamed to "never stop inventing the future," Autodesk CEO Carl Bass invited Mohamed to hang out at told him, "and we'll make something new together," and Box founder and chief executive Aaron Levie asked for Mohamed to visit his publicly traded cloud storage company, according to USA Today.
