Webex Trolls: Students join Webex calls anonymously leading to consequences

As junior Francie Reda quietly listened to her U.S. History Webex call, she quickly became alert to the sound of someone dropping the f-bomb over and over. An anonymous Webex troll joined her class under the name “uh oh stinky,” wanting to cause a ruckus.

“At first I thought it was funny, but I also felt really bad for my teacher,” Reda said. “It was just disrespectful.”

When the troll quickly joined and cursed behind their fake initials, U.S. History teacher Brenda Fishman waited for the disturbance to stop before continuing on and teaching her class.

“It happened super quick and was extremely short,” Fishman said in an email. “It could have been one of my students.”

Administrators and teachers see this happening at least once or twice a day, according to Vice Principal Susan Leonard. This forces them to take on their detective skills and figure out who’s behind the screen and how to handle them.

With these seemingly silly actions comes consequences. Depending on how severe and what truly happened during the call, administrators like Leonard determine the outcome for the students.

“If it’s simply blurting out a silly thing here or there, a simple redirection is good enough,” Leonard said. “It crosses the line when students pose as or impersonate someone else, or if they jump into classrooms that are not their own causing them to miss their own class and then preventing others from learning too.”

Teachers expected situations like these to occur during this unique year as disruptions happen in a normal school day as well. However, it’s hard for staff to have control over students when the only time they see them is behind a screen.

“My hope is that some of the silly, attention-seeking things will decrease when we have more time to participate in our normal social activities,” Leonard said in an email.

Teachers and administrators don’t want these kind of distractions during class. They’re constantly brainstorming how to make this year as normal as possible, and prevent behavior like this.

“If there is no audience for the nonsense, students will eventually stop doing it,” Leonard said. “We are learning more and more everyday.”