Guangzhou professor suspended after students see his sex chats during online class

A professor at Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, has been removed from his teaching duties after accidentally showing students his sexual online conversations with three women while screen sharing during a virtual class.

The incident occurred on July 6 when Wáng Xiǎowěi 王晓玮, a professor from the university’s marine sciences department, was teaching a virtual class with more than 30 students. During a 10-minute break between classes, students noticed that Wang forgot to turn off screen sharing and started sharing, in real time, his WeChat conversations.

Judging from a string of screenshots taken by the students, Wang first declined to hook up with a married woman, who appeared to be pregnant, saying that it was too dangerous. He then agreed to meet up with another woman. Meanwhile, Wang reached out to a third woman and asked if she was free to “have dinner and have sex afterward” later that day.

As an unidentified student noted online, much of the class noticed the embarrassing blunder immediately, and quickly snapped photos of the incident, posting them on social media. Oblivious, Wang continued teaching the class.

The screengrabs blew up on various social media platforms. On Douban, a post (in Chinese) detailing the gaffe received almost 1,000 replies within hours of the incident.  

It didn’t take long before people who knew the professor personally to start revealing more information about him. According to his students, Wang is married and has a child in kindergarten. There were rumors that one of the three women in his WeChat correspondence was actually a Sun Yat-sen University student.

The university issued a statement (in Chinese) on July 8, announcing that it had suspended Wang from his teaching position and created a team to carry out a thorough investigation. Calling Wang’s blunder “a serious teaching accident” that had violated its discipline regulations, the university said that the decision was in line with its “zero tolerance policy” for inappropriate behavior by faculty members.