Yesterday was "The Fourth Be With You" Day–and also the 40th anniversary of the release date of the original Star Wars–a day when the sci-fi classic's hardest-core fans attire themselves in the costumes of their favorite characters: Princess Leia, C-3PO, and so forth.
So a kid in Green Bay, Wisconsin, showed up at his high school dressed up as Darth Vader–and encountered something even more terrifying than the Death Star: helicopter parents and nanny-state school officials.
Here's the report from Variety:
A worried parent found the costume to be a serious threat and notified the police, who evacuated the campus.
The incident occurred Thursday morning at Ashwaubenon High School in Green Bay, where the facility was put on lockdown then evacuated after the possible threat was reported, according to local authorities. Another school in the area was also put on lockdown, authorities said.
For the local police, it was like navigating the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back:
“The student was wearing a Darth Vader outfit with a plastic mask and was carrying a bag with him, and that outfit looked like he might be wearing a bulletproof vest or a flak jacket,” an unidentified police officer told reporters at the scene. “That, with wearing that mask and walking into the back door of the school, made a person very concerned. And we expect that to happen. We sure hope that people would call when this stuff takes place.”
I guess the Jedi Knights of Green Bay don't have much else to do.
The officer added, “We believe it was an innocent mistake right now.”
And that cop wasn't talking about the dumb parent who apparently spent 1977 watching Jimmy Carter deliver energy-conservation chats in his cardigan sweater on television instead of going to the movies. The cop was talking about the cosplaying kid.
We believe it was an Innocent mistake right now.
The local ABC affiliate has more details:
Ashwaubenon Public Safety says a parent saw the costumed student and perceived it to be someone wearing a "ballistic-type vest", carrying a backpack and bag into the school. The parent called police.
Ashwaubenon Public Safety praised the person who called them.
"So when you see something like this, an unknown person walking into a school with a mask on, we have to react to that. We'd be foolish not to," said Capt. Jody Crocker, Ashwaubenon Public Safety.
The School District says they have a no-costume policy and they'll be emphasizing that to students.
"We'll be meeting with the students to re-emphasize that we have to keep each other safe and we can't make poor choices like this," said Brian Nelsen, Principal, Ashwaubenon High School.
Strong the force is. The force of idiotic governmental overreaction, that is.