Student in Logan terror scare speaks out

By Globe Staff

Star Simpson, the MIT student who caused a terrorism scare at Logan International Airport last year because she had a circuit board with lights attached to her sweatshirt, is speaking out today, answering a question many people have wanted to ask her: What the heck were you thinking?

“I was thinking it was a cool day. It was a sweatshirt. If I’d seen my work through their eyes, no, it wouldn’t have made any sense to wear it. But I didn’t see it that way,” she said in her first media interview, which was conducted by tv.boingboing.net, a daily Internet TV show on tech culture.

Simpson had a device made of a plastic circuit board decorated with green lights attached to the front of her black hooded sweatshirt when she walked up to the information counter at Terminal C at 8 a.m. on Sept. 21 and inquired about an incoming flight. State troopers armed with machine guns surrounded her outside the terminal and ordered her to raise her hands.

In June, she was placed on pretrial probation on a disorderly person charge in East Boston Municipal Court. She was ordered to perform 50 hours of community service and apologize for her mistake. She released an apology through her attorney after she was sentenced. She said that the device was a piece of art that she wore to attract attention at a college career fair and she was meeting her boyfriend at the airport.

In the interview, Simpson recalled the moment the whole scare began. The woman at the ticket counter “looked at my jacket and was glazed over completely in fear,” she said. “I tried my best to explain everything to her. I turned the lights off the jacket and nothing calmed her down.”

She also said that authorities had been very concerned about a switch they had found in her backpack.

“My friend had a switch. He’s converting his car to veggie oil -- so he had a switch that I was supposed to give back to him in my bag. And they would hold it up in front of my face and say, ‘What is this? What is this?’ just shouting and yelling and being very, very confusing.”

She said people have had “any number of reactions towards me,” including one man who spit on her bicycle and told her that she should have done time.

She also took a small jab at law enforcement officials, saying, "It's like there's not a huge improvement in actual security, but there's a large step up in acting and theater happening."

State Police spokesman David Procopio said the troopers had responded appropriately. "We don’t have the luxury of dismissing such serious circumstances as ‘theater.’ State Police who patrol the airport have to be alert to all manner of potential security risks that are anything but fictional. ... Freedom of expression does not mean you can walk into an airport wearing clothes that resemble a bomb," he said in a statement.

Simpson said she was giving her first interview to tv.boingboing.net because it had “appeared to get most everything right” in its reports on her. She conducted the interview via Skype with tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin.

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