Zoom Bomb

From the Bruin: Zoombombers attacked multiple professors and students with racist and homophobic slurs on Monday. Zoombombing, when people disrupt Zoom meetings by verbally attacking attendees, occurred during remote UCLA classes at least twice Monday. About 20 minutes into Professor Eric Scerri’s Chemistry 14B: “Thermodynamics, Electrochemistry, Kinetics, and Organic Chemistry” course, an unidentified user began shouting homophobic slurs and insulting Scerri’s age, according to a video obtained by The Bruin. It is not known if the Zoombomber is affiliated with UCLA.

Scerri tried to mute the meeting’s participants, but the unidentified person unmuted themself and continued to attack Scerri. When other students spoke up and asked Scerri to end the meeting, the unidentified person attacked them with homophobic slurs. And when Jenni Dabbert, a student in Chemistry 14B, spoke up and asked Scerri to end the meeting, the person verbally attacked her with comments about her weight. “I have never, ever heard anything that bad come out from somebody’s mouth in real life,” said Dabbert, a third-year ecology and evolutionary biology student. “I’m disgusted … but I’m glad they targeted me instead of anyone else, because I have a thick skin. But it’s shocking and God forbid this hurt anybody else.”

Scerri closed the meeting to try to remove the person and started a new Zoom call, Dabbert said. After the unidentified person was removed, students gave Scerri advice on how to prevent Zoombombing from happening in the future, Dabbert added. They suggested keeping the link to future meetings only on CCLE and disabling the mute control for users.* Scerri declined to be quoted in the story.

This was not the only Zoombombing incident Monday...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2020/10/06/students-professors-report-multiple-incidents-of-zoombombing-in-one-day

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*As host, click on the security shield on the bottom of the Zoom page for options such as preventing participants from unmuting themselves.