Judge Bans Two YouTubers From USC Campus After Prank Sparks ‘Panic’
‘TERROR AND DISRUPTION’
College students fled in fear after Ernest Kanevsky and Yuguo Bai barged into a classroom pretending to be “a member of the Russian Mafia” and “Hugo Boss.”
A judge has ruled that two YouTubers who allegedly caused “terror and disruption” by storming into college classrooms to film prank videos for their channels will be banned from the University of Southern California’s campus. The creators, Ernest Kanevsky and Yuguo Bai, staged at least three “classroom takeover” pranks, according to the university’s suit. Most recently, on March 29, Kanevsky and Bai allegedly interrupted a lecture on the Holocaust, with one pretending to be “a member of the Russian Mafia” and the other responding to “Hugo Boss,” the fashion designer with Nazi ties, court records said. The disruption caused the 40 students attending the class to scramble for the exits, fleeing from “what reasonably appeared to them as a threat of imminent classroom violence,” the university’s suit said. One student told Annenberg Media, “Everyone just left in a really big panic.” In a Tuesday statement, Kanevsky called the lawsuit and the buzz surrounding it “very deceiving.” He said that the intrusion on the lecture had been intended as “a harmless, funny scene,” adding, “The whole notion that we targeted a Holocaust class is absurd.”
