Via Inside Higher Ed, a story with the nearly unbeatable headline: Feds Pounce on Student Dresses As a Ninja. Why was a student running around the Georgia campus dressed as a ninja?
Ransom told The Red & Black student newspaper that he had left a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was snared by agents with guns drawn.
Damnit, now I want to know more! What is the Wesley Foundation, and why are they running ninja vs. pirate smackdowns on college campuses? Or, more precisely, why aren’t they running them on my campus?
“Arr!” “Yaaah!!!” Brilliant!
(Note: I don’t want to know more badly enough to spend time Googling for more information. Really, this is the sort of mental image that can only be spoiled by facts…)
I’m glad they released him as soon as they found out he wasn’t breaking a law. For a minute there I was afraid dressing as a ninja had become a federal offense. I was pretty sure that looking suspicious wasn’t illegal, but you never know.
I’m still having to delete scienceblog cookies.
The Wesley Foundation is just the Methodist Church’s on-campus club, found in Universities across the country. Pretty moderate really, when compared to CCC, etc, as their main goal is often just to help maintain the sense of fellowship and community that the students might have had while in church youth groups during high school.
Even so (and even without booze), it must have been a heck of a party…
On the other hand, arresting people before they’ve actually committed a crime just because of how they’re dressed? Is this really the society we want?
and I just got hit (*again*) from the cookie bug. i need to install a firefox extension that allows me to see the cookies specifically on this page without having to go through the dialog searching…
To be fair to the police, they had no way of knowing he wasn’t a real ninja.
Since the police could see him, they should have known that he wasn’t a real ninja.
I believe that there are a number of mysterious beings that the police should be on the lookout for: Ninja, Samurai, Jedi, and other threats. The problem of course is that there is a lack of proper training at the police academies. There needs to be much more emphasis on training to be able to differentiate the real threats from the wannabees. As a canadian it is not my business to interfeer with US politics, but maybe Homeland Security should be involved here. Oh, sorry higher ups there also seem to have difficulty in differentiating between kids and adult agents posing as kids. My real concern is why the pirate got away; what with the pannic over 9/11 and air piracy. Did the stuffed parrot give him away?
My question is, why was there an ATF swat team on campus in the first place? Do they have a team permanently stationed there to make sure the Methodists don’t get out of hand?