I would assume, on account of it being a school setting as you keep mentioning, that the people in his class probably did know him. At a wild guess, I'd say a fairly large portion of the student body at least knew his name or knew him by sight.
It's not like he just randomly showed up at school with this thing one day, it was probably well-documented that he had a gift for/interest in electronics. Hence, the engineering teacher knew him and knew that it was a clock. It's all well and good to talk about context but we shouldn't be inventing our own.
not only this, but it was still a suitcase. he probably had homework & such in it.
This is why I mentioned context. That's a solar energy suitcase, which is clearly exposed and designed to be noticed, and is most likely on display on an alternative energy convention. There's a world of difference between that and a beeping digital alarm pencil case in a school setting.
the word here
is context, the only reason he didn't put it on full display was cause one of the teachers told him not to.
a school is a place to learn, not a place to be safe or dilude yourself into thinking your kid is safe there. schools are a cesspool for diseases after all, fights & bulling will always occur & kids don't learn without experience. the teacher's decided to panic & teach fear.
the fear of the teachers gets pasted on to the kids, then their parents & before you know it we have even more irrational fear. 9/11 started up this type of fear & stuff like this just doesn't help it any.
the context involved was crafted out of fear, not logic or caution.
this is about as bad as that
autistic kid getting arrested & placed in a straight jacked
if they can't handle a situation which obviously has no real danger & that they are fully aware of such to the point where if it was a bomb they'd be dead by now because of how they handled it.
they should have just pulled the kid to the side & gave it to him straight and confiscated the suitcase.
nope, they took it out of proportion then spewed a few lies to the media to cover up their mistakes and try to justify it.
its a clock, to the eyes of a normal human it is a clock, to the eyes of those afraid its far from what it really is.