HARTFORD, Conn. – Every so often as I’m writing an article, I’ll paste something from my clipboard into the body of the story that has no place therein. Usually, it’s just a matter of having forgotten I’d copied something to the clipboard after the most recent thing I remember copying or cutting and not anything that would escape my notice to end up appearing in the final draft.
To date though, I’m batting 1.000 when it comes to not accidentally linking any of my copy to the feed for my favorite porn videos or cam girls. The same, I gently speculate, cannot be said for University of Connecticut Professor Keith Simmons, a philosophy teacher who made news on campus for reasons having nothing to do with hermeneutics, logic or rhetoric.
According to the Daily Campus, Simmons sent out a routine, assignment-related email last week, but instead of linking to relevant materials or sources, the link pointed to a video on YouPorn.
Whoops!
Quickly realizing what had happened, Simmons immediately sent out a follow-up email telling his students to ignore the previous message, “which seems to have been infected by a bad link.”
“Infected by bad link,” eh? Is that what they call it these days when someone forgets to proofread an email beforehitting send?
Naturally, an error of this sort isn’t about to be kept within the class, or even within the confines of the UConn campus — not in the age of social media. For that matter, even before the existence of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al, telling students to ignore a bad link you just sent them was akin to asking a hungry cat not to pay any attention to an open can of tuna you’ve left sitting on the coffee table: You can make the request, but to assume it will be attended to is wishful thinking in the extreme.
Accordingly, it should have come as no surprise when Justin Schroeder, a mechanical and computer science engineering major, posted the email in a group where it was sure to get plenty of attention: the “Buy or Sell UConn Tickets” group on Facebook, where the amused comments quickly rolled in.
“My initial reaction to the email was nonexistent. I did not even realize that this had happened,” Schroeder said. “They then sent out a correction email saying that the link was broken and to disregard it.”
Predictably, the university is now on record saying administrators are taking the whole thing “very seriously.”
“The university has been made aware of this matter and is in the process of reviewing it,” said UConn spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz. “It would be premature to draw any conclusions about what occurred until the university completes that review. We of course take the matter very seriously.”
In what I hope is a portent of the consequences (or lack thereof) the university’s administration may impose, Simmons and his fellow Huskies don’t seem particularly disturbed by the incident. If anything, they seem greatly amused, as well as sympathetic toward the professor’s plight.
“I decided to post it because I thought it was a funny blunder,” Schroeder said, “It’s not hurting anyone, and I think UConn deserves a little bit of a laugh with finals coming up so soon.”
The response of his peers seemed to mirror his own, Schroeder added.
“The reactions on the post were mostly along the lines of ‘OMG,’ ‘No Way,’ ‘This can’t be real’ and people tagging their friends,” Schroeder said. “Nothing really serious.”
Whether the porn link was a copy/paste mistake or the result of Simmons’ computer being infected with some form of malware (the far less likely explanation, IMO), Schroeder said he hopes UConn doesn’t come down too hard on the smutty professor.
“Whatever it was, it could happen to anyone,” Schroeder said. “I think it is important to say there is nothing wrong with what happened, nothing illegal, nothing bad, just an error.”
That is important to say — and I’d like to think if Schroeder had considered the flub a bigger deal, he might not have chosen to post the email to a popular UConn Facebook group in the first place.
We won’t know how the story ends for Simmons until the university finishes its “investigation.” I should hope UConn’s probe into the matter will be both quick and cheap, because if UConn is like any other college campus around the country, they probably have bigger problems and higher priorities — on a weekly basis, no less — than one adult accidentally sending a porn link to a group of other (albeit younger) adults.
Then again, people are getting awfully sensitive on college campuses these days, so maybe Simmons’s best play would be to blame the whole thing on Ann Coulter and hope the administration buys it.
