Call it a case of gun-hysteria on steroids. On Thursday, the Miami Herald reported that police were called after students at Oberlin High School in Oberlin, La., discussed a mathematical symbol — the square root sign, to be precise.
According to the Herald:
On the afternoon of Feb. 20, detectives investigated a report of terroristic threats at the school, where they learned that a student had been completing a math problem that required drawing the square-root sign.
Students in the group began commenting that the symbol, which represents a number that when multiplied by itself equals another number, looked like a gun.
According to the report, one student allegedly said something the sheriff’s office said could have sounded like a threat out of context — after other students made somewhat similar remarks.
Police searched the student’s home and found no guns and no evidence of any access