This is Joshua Levine, a freshman at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas. He's enrolled in a rhetoric and composition course in which he recently wrote a 1,700-word essay on the Dakota Access Pipeline.
After students handed in their essays, the course professor told BuzzFeed News he then asked the class to create a short presentation on their essay topics. He challenged them to use multimedia components as visuals.
"Each student was required to integrate — preferably to create their own — visuals for their presentation," Levine's professor, who chose to remain anonymous, explained. "Memes, tweets, and videos were encouraged."
And, um, this is how Levine chose to open his presentation on DAPL.
Apparently no one in class was ready to see the porn meme in an actual college course. Fellow classmate Bernadette Robyn Villalpando, who doesn't know Levine well, said she "laughed for at least two minutes."
When Villalpando tweeted about Levine's presentation earlier this month, it quickly went viral. Most people simply couldn't believe this happened in a college course. And they couldn't stop laughing about it.
@meeldreed @heyrobynnn @itsxelachen IM WHEEZING
IM SCREKJNG https://t.co/1b6wzMHxjm
Lmao this can't be real https://t.co/HAjVsckkk7
But others couldn't fathom it for completely different reasons. They thought it represented the absolute worst traits about American universities.
yall pay thousands of dollars for tht https://t.co/wHv7n6Uem4
Some called it "unprofessional."
Still wondering what college these kids go to where they can be completely unprofessional in their presentations https://t.co/LgUBWQ4lPL
And others thought it was downright "inappropriate."
@heyrobynnn @_FrankPussy That's inappropriate can you please remove this
But Villalpando, 19, defended the decision, and thought it got a lot of students in the class to pay attention to Levine's presentation on the DAPL. "We have an amazing professor who helps incorporate the latest trends/memes into class so it's really interesting and not boring," she said.
Somebody: "so what's st edwards like?" Me: https://t.co/zgIh8MYlwC
Their professor also defended his own assignment, as well as Levine's decision to use a porn meme. He said Levine even got a good grade on the presentation — but because he actually included substantive and researched points about DAPL.
@heyrobynnn and people wonder why we hate college kids.
"His presentation dealt with the challenge of determining what counts as 'success' when it comes to social-justice protests, how 'success' might be measured," he said.
"Needless to say, his opening meme grabbed the class's attention."