School Climate & Safety

Man Poses Bomb Threat at Ore. Teaching Office Over Misspelling

By Anthony Rebora — May 30, 2013 1 min read
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Scary world out there for educators: According to a report in the Statesman Journal, a man was arrested in Salem, Ore., yesterday after carrying a pressure cooker into the offices of the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission and claiming he was trying to blow up the sign outside because it included a misspelling.

Actually it wasn’t really even a misspelling. The sign is just missing the “d” at the end of “and,” presumably because of wear and tear or petty vandalism. But this didn’t stop the alleged perpetrator from apparently seeing the error as somehow emblematic of an unconscionable decline in educational standards.

He also complained about spelling errors in the instructions he downloaded on making a bomb—who woulda thought?—and suggested that these, too, should also be of concern to the employees of the Teacher Standards office.

Alas, police say the pressure cooker didn’t actually contain a bomb, and the man was charged with disorderly conduct.

The Teacher Standards an(d) Practices Commission oversees teacher licensure in the state. “He did not look like one of the educators we serve,” the commission’s executive director said of the alleged perpetrator.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.