Fresno students get ‘mooned,’ Clovis class Zoombombed during week one of online school

Distance learning got off to a rough start in the Fresno area after students at one school turned an email into a 1,000-plus-reply chain, which included memes, and a student mooning the camera.

At another school, an intruder yelled an obscene word before being removed from a Zoom class.

The incidents spotlight technical challenges confronting schools during the early stages of the new era of distance learning amid the coronavirus pandemic. At least one parent expressed frustration in an interview with The Bee and said the reply-all incident at Bullard High School was “just an example of how unprepared they are.”

On Monday, a student at Bullard hit “reply all” to an email, and all students and staff have been receiving emails, as students replied with chats, memes and photos, the parent said.

One student appeared to post a photograph depicting someone “mooning” the camera.

Fresno Unified spokesperson Vanessa Ramirez confirmed the incident Tuesday.

“A student who thought they were sending an email to a teacher unintentionally sent an email to all site staff and students,” Ramirez said.

“As soon as school administrators were aware, the reply all feature was disabled and emails were deleted. If parents or students are still receiving emails, we encourage them to forward them to the school administrators, so they take appropriate action.”

Ramirez said the student who sent the mooning photo would be “disciplined appropriately.”

The parent who spoke with The Bee said her child was still receiving emails as of Tuesday, and it was up to 1,100 replies. The parent did not want to be identified because she worried about her child becoming the target of bullying.

The parent said she worries the initial email could have been an important announcement from the school, but neither she nor her child could find the original through all the replies. Ramirez did not say what the initial email was about.

The parent said she did not have confidence that the school year would go well after this.

“To me, this was so predictable, and for the administration not to set up the email so they can’t reply on it, it’s just an example of how unprepared they are,” the parent said.

In the email, some students wondered how the chain got started: “i wonder who the dummy was that replied all to the email the principal sent out,” one of the replies read.

Other replies included random memes and a Snapchat photo of a squirrel.

A few of the replies asked other students to stop: “just stop please.”

“Stop blowing the chat up it’s getting on everyone’s nerves cmon guys.”

Clovis Unified Zoom intruder

At Kastner Intermediate School, a “young person” entered a Zoom class on Tuesday and yelled an obscene word before being removed, according to Clovis Unified spokesperson Kelly Avants.

The district was investigating if the person was a student or not.

The Zoom bomber also “held up a picture of some kind in the space of a second or two before the teacher removed them from the class that they were entering,” Avants said.

This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 5:00 AM.