Washington state high school student Ibrahim Ahmad asked classmate Rilea Wolfe to prom. She said yes, but his promposal got him suspended from school for five days.
Ahmad’s promposal involved him wearing a fake bomb and holding a sign reading “I kno it’s A little Late, But I’m kinda…THE BOMB! Rilea, Will U Be My Date To Prom?”
“I’m Middle Eastern, and I thought the bomb was kind of funny and clever. I wasn’t wearing the vest for more than, like, 20 seconds. I asked her, took a picture, took it off, and then the school got upset,” Ahmad told local paper The Columbian.
The “bomb” was made out of a paintball vest that Ahmad had stuffed with red wires and tubing to resemble explosives.
Aside from exploiting offensive stereotypes about Middle Easterners, Ahmad’s promposal was obviously risky, considering he wore a fake bomb to school. So school administrators suspended Ahmad for five days for the stunt and banned him from attending prom.
This is hardly the first time that a “promposal”—a grandiose gesture to ask someone to prom—has gone south so quickly. Recently, a California woman named Stephanie got her boyfriend arrested as part of her plan to pop the prom question. Similarly racist promposals are also far from uncommon, with a photo of a student wearing a Middle Eastern head scarf and holding a sign saying “it would be bomb if we went to prom” going viral earlier this month.
School superintendent Mark Mansell issued the following statement to the Washington Post on Ahmad’s stunt:
Our administrators and staff are committed to creating learning environments where all students are safe and parents feel comfortable sending their children to school. Given all that is going on in the world today, even simulated weapons/devices can undermine our collective efforts to create a safe school and therefore are handled with appropriate disciplinary actions.
Because it’s 2015, the whole thing was also caught on video.
H/T Washington Post | Photo via The Columbian