Petition Backs Prof Who Quit Over Porn Browser Tab In Zoom Class

LOS ANGELES—Students have posted an online petition supporting a University of Miami lecturer who quit his job after accidentally sharing his screen that included a single porn site tab during an online Zoom class, according to a report by The Miami Herald. The Change.org petition to rehire business analytics lecturer John Zhang gathered 1,500 signatures in the first day it went online. During a March 26 class conducted via Zoom due to the ongoing coronavirus shutdown at the university — and at universities throughout the United States — Zhang shared his screen with the students in the class. But in the web browser image shared by the teacher, one student noticed that a tab to the left of the screen contained the heading, “Busty college girl fu...” with the remainder of the title not visible, The Miami Hurricane student newspaper reported. No images from the porn site were visible. But the student who spotted the tab quickly created a video and posted it on the social media app TikTok where it went viral, being widely shared even before Zhang had ended the class. The lecturer held two more online classes, and issued an apology to students. “I don’t know how it happened,” Zhang reportedly said. “I didn’t see it, I’m pretty sure everybody else did. My apologies to the class.” But during a subsequent Zoom session, Zhang failed to appear online. The university later said that he has resigned his position. The lecturer’s name was almost immediately “removed from the school website, his email is no longer active and his classes this semester in the course catalogue have been changed to reflect their new instructors. His name has been expunged from all UM affiliated websites,” the Hurricane reported. But on Wednesday, the day after the student paper reported that Zhang was out of a job due to the incident, student Alex Torres posted an online petition to rehire him.  “People make mistakes, are sexual beings, and should not be fired when no true porn was shared,” Torres said, as quoted by The Herald. “We no longer live in the 18th century and individuals are allowed to have a personal, sexual life. This was obviously a mistake.” The student who made the TikTok video that ignited the controversy told the student paper that he regretted his actions. “I felt bad about the attention it was getting,” he told The Hurricane. “I didn’t want him to lose his job. I thought he would be fine. I felt really bad for him.” Photo By Vitamin / Pixabay