Adults only? Class accidentally exposed to porn
It shocked, it offended and it almost ruined a group project.
During a 7:30 a.m. Management and Human Resources 3110 class in the Business Building Room 215, one group presented something more than planned.
A member of Group Three inserted a DVD, which included a project presentation, into the computer connected to the classroom projector, opened up Windows Media Player and pressed play.
However, instead of playing the DVD, the program played what was last in its memory – a video clip from a hard-core pornography Web site – onto the giant projection screen in front of about 130 students.
Members of the group struggled to turn it off and quickly did, but after a few seconds, the damage had still been done.
“I wasn’t even looking, and then I heard this big gasp in the room and I looked up just in time see them click it off,” said David Herrmann, executive in residence and lecturer, who instructs the class.
“I don’t even want to describe it,” he said. “It wasn’t soft-core – let’s put it that way.”
MHR 3110 is a class that teaches management and leadership through groups organizing service projects. This week, groups have been presenting their projects to the class.
“We spent hours and hours on our project,” Lindsey Roberts, member and CEO of Group Three, said. “And, I think that little thing ruined our project.”
Roberts said some classmates blamed her group for playing the clip on purpose.
“It wasn’t us,” she said.
“It was unfortunate, because [Group Three] was, in my opinion, one of the top three projects in the class. It really just took the demeanor out of their presentation,” Herrmann said.
After the incident, the group gave Herrmann the DVD and he called Computer Services.
CS got the call, but the student employees, being uncomfortable with issue, contacted TJ Hilton, the systems administrator, Hilton said.
Herrmann and Hilton checked the DVD and found it to be clean – proving Group Three’s innocence.
Around 12:30 p.m., Hilton went to check the classroom computer, but found no trace of the pornography.
“When I looked at the computer, it was completely empty,” he said.
Somebody, between a previous class-time had cleaned out all the Internet history and temporary Internet files stored on the computer, Hilton said.
Because of the suspicious file cleaning, Herrmann said he suspects somebody maliciously put the material on the computer as a prank, but he isn’t sure.
“If I knew it was somebody in my class and they did it on purpose, I’d fail them,” he said.
However, Hilton said he has been getting calls about pornography on classroom computers more and more and it is becoming a common problem.
“Unfortunately, there seems to be a trend,” he said.
The classroom computers are always open to the Internet and putting passwords on the machines only causes professors to be frustrated, he said.
“Basically we have to keep them open,” he said.
Although, next semester CS plans to install software on the computers, which cleans out files each night to rid the problem of the unsuspecting running into pornography files.
-joelfeathers@cc.usu.edu