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CLEMSON — Two students have been charged in connection with the exploding soda bottles that several people reported to be gunshots, prompting a campus-wide CU Safe Alert Oct. 14, according to Clemson University Police officials.
University police charged Michael James Seeber and Kyrylo Chernyshuk, both materials science and engineering graduate students from Clemson, with disturbing school. Each was released on a $1,000 personal recognizance bond.
The university Office of Community and Ethical Standards also is investigating.
Around 2:15 p.m., Clemson University Police received reports of gunshots on campus at the Thornhill Village residential apartments and police found several one liter plastic bottles had exploded.
An all clear message regarding the situation was sent to students and faculty at 3:22 p.m., a little more than one hour later. according to Clemson University News Services.
Students in the area indicated that mixing ingredients in plastic bottles, then shaking them up and putting the bottles in the sun can cause explosions that sound like gunshots.
The explosions caused little or no damage and no one was injured.
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This is where the world is going. We better not Fart when we go through Clemson, they might shoot us.
It's amazing what Dry Ice can do.lol
$1000 bond? How crazy, in Anderson you can run a crack house, beat up someone and have a loaded gun and get out cheaper! Clemson/America = knee jerk.
You can drop a couple of mentos into a 2 liter soda bottle, put the cap back on and after a few mintues it will explode.
There are a ton of youtube videos showing people doing this.
Some of the bottles are like rockets when they explode.
in response to starflyer59
So not only does it explode like a bomb, it takes off like a rocket too???? I think we have found Sadam Hussein's missing WMD's. Forget calling the police for these two kids in Clemson who were having fun outside their dorm room, we had better just go ahead and call homeland security and have them sent to Gitmo.
Seriously folks, I am all for feeling secure, but aren't we taking this a little too far? They are being charged with "Disturbing School" and there is a $1000 bond for that?!? You have to be kidding me. Their exploding bottles didn't disturb school, the administration's knee-jerk reaction by calling an alert is what disturbed the school. Why was there no investigation as to what caused the noise before the school was locked down? If anyone should be charged, it is the administration officials who called for the security alert.
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least 20 things that I did while in school that were more deserving of punishment than this. Each of these was not only laughed at by the faculty, many of them were participated in by members of the faculty. Haven't we taken the security thing a little too far now? Pretty soon we will be arrested for coughing in class, of course, that cough could be more than just a disturbance, we could be a carrier of a biological weapon....
This could have been a funny, even harmless prank....if it had been done in the 70's.
When a student takes a gun and starts shooting randomly or even directly at fellow students and faculty we have to question ourselves.
What could have been done to prevent this....
Why didn't they take his comments seriously...
Where was security...
Who is responsible for my child's safety...
Why did those student's have to be shot...
OK this was not the same thing * BUT * what if....
It happens..so where do we draw the line?
IF you don't wear your seat belt and IF you wreck COULD your life have been saved?
IF that had been a gun and IF students were being shot COULD a lock down save students?
I would call this childish behavior as hindsight.
Otherwise I call it threatening behavior.
Why did they chose to do this where they did?
If they had done this in the country there would not have been such panic.
Smart kids should know this which means they WANTED to cause a disturbance.
I think the punishment should have been more severe.
in response to mdale
mdale....AMEN!!! Not a knee jerk reaction. Not a funny prank on a college campus during this day and time. All posts above mdale are just WRONG!!!
If you think this was wrong, I assume you had a boring teen and 20 something life ---- They had no bad intentions and no-one was hurt... Should have received a reprimand by the police and that would have neen sufficient... Perhaps $1000 for second incident ....
in response to mdale
OK, I guess we had better put the campus on lockdown anytime a car backfires as well. You know if I drop a textbook onto the floor it makes a pretty loud bang as well, perhaps that should be an offense. What about construction using nailguns? Those actually can be weapons, yet the campus is not on lockdown anytime there is a construction project occurring.
The simple fact of the matter is we do not need to overreact to every little thing that happens. I agree that there need to be some safety protocols in place, but we do not need to panic every single time we hear a noise. What is so different between now and the 70's that this is now a criminal offense rather than, as you stated, a "funny, even harmless prank"? What is now harmful about this. No one was hurt, there was no property damage, and there are no lasting effects (other, of course, than on these two gentlemen's criminal records). It sounds to me as if the administration overreacted, called for a security alert without enough information, and now have to blame someone so that they can save face.
The "Disrupting School" charge is a joke if ever I have heard one. If these two gentlemen had committed an actual crime, why are they not charged with possession of a WMD, illegal firearms charges, attempted murder, assault and battery, destruction to public or private property, or even vagrancy or vandalism? The answer is simple, there was no crime committed. The administration and police department are trying to find a scapegoat to take the blame so that look proactive and responsible rather than reactionary and panicked.
It was a great idea to put the school on lock-down until the cause of the noise was established. If my child was a student on campus, I would certainly feel more secure knowing that they are protected in the event of gunshots. However, once the cause of the shots was found to be exploding soda bottles, I think the punishment should have been less harsh. Certainly the culprits should be punished, but I believe a criminal record is too much.
I just talked to a man that just quit working for the Clemsom Cops because of their bad attitude. He said cops were treating students badly just for standing on the corner talking. Yes it is their job to protest students not to bully them.
So..... Sundance.... Let's say that I know this guy that wants to try this "dry ice" thing..... How would he do it?
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