In response to Ohio University's response to Patrick K. Hanlin's bicycle: What's the big deal here? Hanlin probably did nothing differently than what he did every other day; he rode his bike, and because of an incompetent, bumbling police officer on the lookout for terrorists, he now faces charges of inducing panic.
Do you know how hard we're laughing at your paranoid authoritative figures? If a squirrel's job description includes looking for offenses under the ever-expanding umbrella term of terrorism
don't you think that squirrel would do his or her darnedest to find that nut? The wrong person is being charged here; the cop deserves to be charged with inducing panic and, to a lesser degree, trying to be a hero in a land full of duct tape-carrying, patriotic avengers.
Buy Hanlin a new bike with the same stickers, shake his hand and apologize. Give this cop a red nose and some seltzer water and send him to the circus: this cop's a clown!
-Todd Faltin is a journalism student at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania 17
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