Two students linked to ‘Pornhub’ incident at Lakewood Ranch charter school

Imagine School at Lakewood Ranch has taken “disciplinary action” against two students who exposed their classmates to pornography, according to a recent investigation.

The public charter school began its investigation on Nov. 12. Tropical Storm Eta was passing, local schools were closed and the eighth-grade students were preparing for an online class.

It was approaching 11:30 a.m. when students began to share their surprise and confusion in a program called Google Classroom.

“That’s messed up,” one student wrote.

“My eyes are burning and I’m going to have really bad nightmares,” another student followed.

Students usually start in Google Classroom to check for announcements and assignments. Then, the students click a link to join Google Meet and watch a live broadcast of their teacher’s lesson.

At first, the school thought someone shared a link to the pornography during class. However, the problem actually began when students tried to join the video lesson, according to new findings.

Most students clicked a link in Google Classroom and joined their teacher’s stream, much like any other day. Another group of students — about six or seven — took a different path, school spokeswoman Marisa Preuss said in a follow-up email.

Instead of clicking the link within Google Classroom, the students opened a new tab, went directly to Google Meet and entered the classroom code.

The issue, Preuss said, is that someone created a new meeting using the same code.

While the code worked for students who first clicked the link, the same was not true for students who bypassed the link and entered the code directly into Google Meet, according to a report filed with the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.

“This brought them to a separate Google Meet meeting where an unknown individual was streaming a video from ‘Pornhub’ of a male and female engaging in sexual activity,” the report states, naming the adult website.

The school filed a report with the sheriff’s office on Nov. 17. Detectives found no criminal wrongdoing and were expected to close the case, according to a statement from Randy Warren, the department spokesman.

Preuss, the chief communication officer for Imagine Schools, said the local campus found two students responsible for creating the spoof code and meeting.

School officials notified the students’ parents and took “appropriate disciplinary action.”

“To protect the students’ privacy, I cannot share more details about what disciplinary action was taken, but it was in accordance with school and district guidelines,” she said in a prepared statement.

“More importantly, the school’s IT team has addressed the issue and taken appropriate steps to try and make sure this doesn’t happen again,” she continued.

Imagine School at Lakewood Ranch uses a program called GoGuardian to block porn and other explicit content on school-issued devices. Part of the school’s investigation focused on how students were able to access the broadcast.

As it turns out, the students were using personal devices when they accidentally viewed the stream.

“These are unprecedented times, and schools all across the globe are having to adapt to online learning and the security implications that come along with it,” Preuss concluded.

This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 12:10 PM.