I was reminded about a True story published two years ago this week, and researched the resolution. Let’s just say it’s surprising.
It was released as the Story of the Week (25 September 2022); it’s OK to post that graphic, which is included below. Let’s start with the story:
Campus Police Just About Had a Meltdown
The University of Utah football team was about to play San Diego State when a message was posted on Yik Yak, an anonymous hyper-local social media app: “If we don’t win today, I’m detonating the nuclear reactor on campus.” UU’s Salt Lake City campus does have a nuclear research reactor, and a student was arrested last month for making a bomb threat, so the community was edgy. Police tracked the message to engineering student Meredith L.U. Miller, 21, who told police the post was “a joke.” According to state law, bomb threats are a crime even if the person making it has no intent or ability to carry the threat out. Miller was arrested, charged with making terroristic threats. (RC/KTVX Salt Lake City) …Being “anonymous” online: not as anonymous as everyone thinks.
To Her Rescue
FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (which renamed about that time to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) took on Miller’s case. FIRE “urged” the D.A. to drop the charge because the threat was “clearly a joke,” and “also argued that the reactor itself was not a weapon of mass destruction, and it can’t be detonated.”
Immediately after that, there was this, in parentheses: “(The size of a microwave, it doesn’t release dangerous levels of radioactivity and is so safe students can stand near it for prolonged periods.)” Take a look at the photo that the University of Utah released at the time.
The “size of a microwave”?! And of course “students can stand near it for prolonged periods”: that’s how it was designed. It’s a university research reactor, not Chernobyl. It’s also not a toy: “The reactor is a 100 kW General Atomics TRIGA Mark I,” UU said in a statement after Miller’s arrest. And while “The reactor is inherently safe,” said Glenn Sjoden, the director of UU’s Nuclear Engineering Program, “idle threats made to the facility are treated seriously, and we encourage folks to really bear in mind that nuclear facilities are always treated with the utmost respect and safety; therefore, the government and law enforcement will take any action necessary to mitigate any threat made.”
As University Police Chief Jason Hinojosa put it, “In the age that we’re living in, we have to take every threat seriously.” This isn’t a kid playing “cops and robbers” with a finger “gun,” it’s someone who knows the university has a nuclear reactor promising, “If we don’t win today, I’m detonating the nuclear reactor on campus.”
Excuses, Excuses
There’s a reason state law is written that way — that “bomb threats are a crime even if the person making it has no intent or ability to carry the threat out,” as the story says. The issue here isn’t whether the research reactor can actually be “detonated” or not, it’s the very nature of a terroristic threat: a threat created to induce “terror” whether it’s plausible or not (the targets certainly can’t say so immediately upon hearing it, eh?), and such a specific threat in a community already “edgy” over a previous bomb threat is “clearly” (to use FIRE’s word) a crime, not a “joke.”
As an engineering student who in fact had access to the building where the reactor is housed, Miller knew (or should have known) the seriousness of the threat.
The criminal charge was dropped. Still, the UofU still threatened to suspend Miller for two years. “FIRE thus wrote the university … demanding it end any investigation of Miller and forgo punishment. In February 2023, after a hearing and with the help of FIRE and an attorney, the university agreed it would not punish Miller.” (emphasis added)
While I Agree a felony rap (let alone a prison sentence) would probably be overzealous, assuming a first-time offender, to come away without any sort of punishment is just as crazy. At the very least, a slap-on-the-hand misdemeanor, including an agreement that Miller pay the costs of the police response and investigation, was in order. The idea that someone caught doing something outrageous should get off scot-free by whining “it was just a joke!” — the instant plea of a large percentage of law-breakers the moment they are caught — needs to be stomped down, not reinforced as a precedent.
Sources: University of Utah’s 2002 press release, and FIRE’s press release.
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Blowing up nuclear material is the definition of a “dirty bomb”, which can be extremely harmful. And making anonymous posts about violence just heightens the danger because they’re trying to cover their tracks.
I don’t really have an issue with having some consequences to stupid threats, whether this or saying things at airport security or whatever. I agree that a felony might be overkill, but you’ve taken police time off of other enforcement to waste time investigating a threat, even if it’s empty.
I fully agree with you. Humor does not include spend a big chunk of taxpayer dollars just for lulz.
Seems to me some community service would have been appropriate. Perhaps speaking to peers about words having consequences, or maybe just mopping the floors in the nuclear physics lab for a month.
A bomb threat is not a suitable subject for a joke. Even though much of the fear of nuclear power is irrational, there are enough legitimate stories about damage and even death from improperly handled radioactive material that the general public is certainly justified in fear.
How much public funds were spent dealing with this “joke”? At a bare minimum there should have been a significant fine.
I remember the story and agree that there should be some sort of punishment for calling in a bomb threat. Whether it is real is irrelevant, a threat is a threat.
“It’s a joke”…. The excuse of extremist politicians and hate mongerers all over.
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And other petty criminals. -rc
This illustrates one more reason why I do NOT joke about serious things like that. I may have amusing things to say (either in conversation or online), and I may have done stand-up comedy before… but there are PLENTY OF TOPICS that I will not joke about. Besides large-scale weapons, my list also includes racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, violence, and peanut butter. (Creamy, not chunky.)
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Creamy is correct! -rc
Your comment at the end summed up my feelings too. I was about to write that as a comment here, but then saw you already covered that base.
Nearly every day I work with devices that are designed to create large amounts of radiation. I had never thought about “detonation” occurring with nefarious use, but in retrospect, I would have thought it possible. Now I don’t, other than the danger of a “dirty bomb” explosion. Been doing this since 1985. Never worried me before nor does it now.
There are three issues:
1. US First Amendment case law on the limits of speech, for example: speech “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action”; and also “In applying the clear and present danger test in Schenck v. United States (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. observed: “The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” Holmes cited the example of a person who falsely shouts “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, causing a panic.”
2. The cultural ambiguity between private speech or ephemeral banter (e.g. a BS session at a bar) and publicly printed material (which used to be hardcopy and thus subject either to editors or simply time to consider words between writing and physically posting or printing) which is now not only instantaneous, but can be reproduced indefinitely and far beyond a seemingly private or limited conversation into the public realm, as a permanent record.
This was a stupid and irresponsible thing for an engineering student with actual access to the device to say in print, or to publicise — which is what we do when we leave comments on the world wide web, which absolutely needs to be drummed into every schoolchild before they touch an internet-device. — and perhaps they can educate their parents and grandparents afterwards. Whether this incident amounts to shouting fire in a crowded theatre is debatable (is an offbeat internet forum a crowded theatre?), as is whether such a comment is incitement in an immanent or likely.
3. I would otherwise be entirely sympathetic to college-level action regarding the above, except for what we see in the broader context of all this offline and online all around the world right now: obvious parody, satire, jokes and pointed criticism being treated as disinformation, misinformation, malinformation or whatever the term _du_jour_ is, to be quashed sometimes with state help and other times around the world with actual prosecution. By way of analogy: the “Miranda” in the case that led to Americans’ famous “Miranda Rights” being formalised, was a truly horrific person: the point is that there are other individual rights and liberties which need to be guarded against the state… an idea which unfortunately seems to be falling out of fashion on both the Left, Right and Centre.
Nah, that wasn’t a threat, it was hyperbole. When something starts with “If (sports team) doesn’t win today I’m gonna…” the rest isn’t to be taken seriously. These cops just needed to appear to do sopmething to justify the outrageous amounts of money spent on them.
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You’re complaining that cops actually try to enforce the laws they are charged to enforce. Seems to be an odd position. -rc
About as funny as yelling “fire” in a theatre.