During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people had to adjust the way they worked, went to school, and lived their lives.

While most people were good about it, some actively tried to cause problems for others, sometimes for no reason at all.

That is what happened to the students in this story, and the ones causing the problems were finally caught and dealt with.

Check it out.

Keep kicking myself and other students off our Remote Desktop link for the heck of it? Enjoy the consequences!

So this happened last October, in 2020, and I feel it’s finally safe to share it.

Given the situation at that time, going to campus was a no-go so everything was online.

As such, a lot of programs used for course work, which were only on PC, needed a remote link for those of us on Macs or other devices.

This link connects students to assigned desktops physically on campus through an application like Citrix.

It would only allow students onto the desktops when another class was not remotely ‘using’ that lab at the time, and at night, when registered classes were done.

The on-campus computers would show that their drives were in use, so the students who lived on campus would know that someone was remotely accessing it.

Well, I was taking a course in Remote Sensing, which required access to programs such as ArcMap, ArcGIS, R, and ERDAS (you can look them up).

They were only available on PC so I, as a MacBook user, needed to use the remote link.

The issue started at the start of October, when I was working on an assignment in ArcMap.

I was really startled when I was suddenly kicked out, and then furious because I hadn’t had the chance to save my latest input.

I then went back to the webpage, re-input my student credentials, and logged into a different desktop.

Not two minutes later was I logged out AGAIN.

Rightly peeved, I emailed the professor and TAs about it, and moved onto other homework.

I figured it was a bug that it would soon be fixed.

No. It continued throughout the entire month.

That would be annoying!

I ended up having to work on my remote labs between 9pm and 2am, as I literally was not able to work during the day without being kicked off.

It was really annoying, especially since I couldn’t even work during my assigned lab time!

Other students started reporting this, and we’d get a lot of emails from IT.

Updates, patches, and things like that we had to install to try and patch this ‘bug.’

And nothing worked. It was painful.

I decided that enough was enough, and took a train to campus after my online morning classes.

If it was going to keep booting me off the remote, then I would just go in-person!

I completed the online health check, got to campus no problem, and made my way to the building that housed all the PCs.

Yes, we have a building that houses all the PCs for computer classes.

Anyways, I went up and towards the lab that my credentials were registered to.

I’m going to be honest. I wasn’t expecting what I saw.

But I sure was mad.

Through the windows into the lab, I saw two guys going from PC to PC logging students off!

At first I couldn’t believe it, and then I got furious.

They were laughing about screwing with hard working students! (I will call them Dumb and Dumber)

That’s I decided to get some payback.

I pulled out my phone and placed it beside the window, and it was partially hidden by the trash bin inside the classroom, recording them and what they were doing.

They didn’t notice me, thank God, and I got onto my laptop, remote linking to my phone.

I then got onto the university social media page, and started to livestream the video from my phone.

Oh, this went viral fast.

I put a title along the lines of “Found the bugs kicking students off Remote Desktop” (video has been deleted, and I will explain soon).

It didn’t take long for fellow students to take notice of it, and it went viral within 30 minutes.

Names were soon put out as Dumb and Dumber were recognized, and there was a lot of hate in the comments.

Even campus police replied, asking for the location.

I was all too happy to give it.

It was then I saw on the stream that Dumb pulled out his phone, and he started freaking out.

He had noticed the stream and that it was live.

Wow, they should have realized it was too late for them.

I quickly rushed to grab my phone and retreat, and that’s when Dumber rushed out the door and tackled me!

We started brawling (it was self-defense, as he kept attacking me to grab my phone), and then I saw Dumb going for my laptop, which was hosting the stream (which was STILL being recorded from my phone!).

So, I kicked Dumber between the legs while elbowing him in the neck, before jumping Dumb.

To be honest I don’t really know what happened next, but I do remember campus police having to pull me off Dumb.

Apparently I had full bodied tackled him away from my laptop, and he punched me in the face.

With me apparently grabbing his carry-on bag, bashing him over the head with it accidentally cracking his laptop. Oops!

So, anyways the fight was broken up and we were all taken down to the campus police office.

To make a very long story short, I got a relative slap on the wrist for my part of it.

Had to do some on-campus community service, but my record was kept clean.

Thankfully, I was not charged for the fight or the laptop, as I was able to prove self defense, and that they hit me first/tried to destroy my property intentionally (which made it worse for them).

I was let off on the laptop for a technicality, as I was punched in the face, and had no idea that he even had a laptop in his carry on. Phew.

As for Dumb and Dumber, I was called into testify at each of their hearings in December.

It is a very serious offense.

Turns out kicking students off remote links was considered a very grave academic offence, as it was intentional tampering with others’ work.

The video stream I took was a big part of the evidence against them, and CCTV proved that they had been doing it for weeks.

In almost all the computer labs.

They had intentionally messed with over a hundred students.

Adding to attacking me (I had a nice shiner for a month) and my devices (instead of running) they got into pretty hot water.

Now, the reason this wasn’t discovered sooner was due to the fact that this Remote Link was new to us, and IT was still working through the bugs.

I don’t know exactly what happened next, as they just needed me to come in (masked) and tell what I did and remembered.

However, I did get notification in my email in March this past year that two students were expelled for intentional tampering of other students work.

Of course it was them!

Can you guess who?

Yup, Dumb and Dumber got the boot for their dumb actions.

It gets even better though. Turns out they were here on student visas!

Which meant that not only were they expelled from the university with a black mark on their records, they were also given the boot from the country!

And most definitely back to their very disappointed parents.

Maybe it’s karma, but they got publicly exposed on a live-stream for their actions for all the school to see (which was taken down due to it needing to be evidence against them and all).

But, Yep. They were expelled twice for their dumb actions, and with their names in campus infamy for their stunt.

Hope they’ve learned their lesson!

Well done, I wonder what they were thinking. Doing it once is a silly prank, but every day is crazy.

Let’s take a look at some of the comments.

Yup, that just isn’t right.

I am curious about this as well.

Yeah, why would they do that?

I bet it drove the students nuts.

They really should have been.

What is wrong with these kids?

At least their actions had consequences.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.