When Math Equations Are Deemed Suspicious, It’s Time to Update ‘See Something, Say Something’

On Saturday, news broke about a passenger removed from an American Airlines flight (operated by Air Wisconsin) due to the suspicious activity of one guy … doing math.

Economist Guido Menzio, Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was sitting on board minding his own business. In this case, that meant “Algebra-based work relating to a talk he was about to give at Queen’s University.” Apparently, this mysterious language made the lady next to him very uncomfortable because, although she was shortly removed (voluntarily) under the pretense of being sick, the two-hour delay involved the unveiling of a truth. She feared he was a terrorist, reportedly because he was writing in a script she didn’t recognize.

Mt first thought was, thank goodness it was the lady who left the flight and not Menzio. We all know these incident-sparked-by-untenable-suspicion stories don’t often turn out so (relatively) well.

The level of inconvenience that one person’s ignorance is permitted to cause for so many others makes one want to scream (this holds true outside of airplanes, too). It’s infuriating, presuming this story is being reported fully and accurately (we don’t have any comment from the woman). It is pure ignorance – but it goes beyond the issue of whether she recognized that he was writing math formulae. Even if Menzio had been writing in Arabic, so what? The nonsense of this story goes beyond what he was writing. If we can’t manage to establish even basic standards of what is defensibly “suspicious,” it renders the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign worthless.

Some people reacted to this story by saying there should be consequences for her “stupidity.” Twitter calls to “shame her“, “fine her”, treat her like a “drunk [disorderly] passenger” — all suggestions I saw. These ideas sound satisfying at first, but it’s wise to resist being too harsh. We can’t penalize people for reporting when they think something is “off,” even if they might be making a silly mistake. That is unless we’re ready to abandon See Something/Say Something and tell everyone who’s not an “expert” to shush up and keep any observations to themselves — because that will be the effect when people become too self-conscious to report things, whether intended or not.

The story of the economist suspected of being a terrorist this week reminded me of this. #CrewedTalk pic.twitter.com/ruQrl3Gm87

— Sarah Steegar (@FATravelWriter) May 8, 2016

Meanwhile, don’t forget that even if no one welcomed this woman’s information, they still would have incurred a return to the gate to remove her for her “sickness.” We do not take off with passengers who decide they are too ill or too nervous to continue (something that seems to happen a lot on Dominican Republic flights). The delay would have been shorter if she’d never shared her fears, yes, but not entirely avoided. You simply can’t take the human element out of dealing with humans.

So here we are, angry and frustrated at stories like this but without a foolproof solution. Maybe we could start by establishing what does not constitute “suspicious behavior”:

• Speaking a language you don’t understand
• Writing a language you don’t understand
• Having certain physical characteristics
• Someone not being interested in talking to you

Yes, let’s start there! Tell everyone you know. Maybe we should put that on the See Something/Say Something campaign ads: No combination of those four things above constitutes “suspicious.” Bundled with other behaviors you can identify as seeming out of place? Perhaps, fine. On their own? Not fine.

I do want to touch on the last bullet, however. The lady in this case does get credit for trying to engage in conversation with Menzio. It didn’t work for her, but she could have been more specific. In her shoes, I would have specifically asked about what he was working on in a casually curious way rather than merely engaging in small talk. His disinterest may have remained, but at least it would approach what she actually wanted answers about. That is the number one thing people should do when they come across someone that makes them suspicious: Talk to them! I have cleared up a number of potential problems on the airplane by doing this when others were too convinced, shy or flustered to do so.

Fortunately, Menzio does not seem interested in drawing out the incident. He says he was “treated respectfully throughout,” but is frustrated by a “broken system that does not collect information efficiently.” It’s hard to argue with that sentiment. No one wants security teams to rush safety decisions, and it takes times to coordinate different departments that would need to be contacted when clearing up a security complaint, but streamlined coordination is always something that needs major improvement. Meanwhile, if they could incorporate a vetting step regarding what is/isn’t suspicious behavior as listed above, that would be really great start.

[Photo: Guido Menzio, economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Economics]