The Hill and Ayres Hall, University of Tennessee. (University of Tennessee) 
 
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 By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel 
 
 University of Tennessee officials are investigating a claim of sexual harassment after reports surfaced online that a student received a zero on a geology quiz for answering a question about his lab instructor's name with that of a semifamous lingerie model. 
 
 Neither the student nor the teaching assistant filed a complaint, said university spokeswoman Karen Simsen. Rather, faculty in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences raised the issue Monday after spotting a post about the incident online at the website totalfratmove.com. 
 
 The university has been on fall break this week, and the school is still trying to reach all parties involved, Simsen said. 
 
 "The university is aware of the issue," she said. "Our Office of Equity and Diversity is looking into the matter, as they are required to consider all complaints brought to them by a member of our campus community." 
 
 Keaton Wahlbon, a freshman majoring in economics, was apparently given a zero by an instructor who wrote "inappropriate" on his quiz next to his answer to the question, "What is your lab instructor's name? (If you don't remember make something good up.)" 
 
 Wahlbon wrote "Sarah Jackson" — also the name of a lingerie model and actress with a handful of TV credits, including as a model on the 2007 show "Deal or No Deal," according to IMDB.com. 
 
 The post included a photo of the quiz and emails between Wahlbon and his professor, William Deane. 
 
 In the email, Wahlbon protested his grade. 
 
 "A bunch of us didn't know (the instructor's name) so I literally put down a very common girl name and a common last name, Sarah Jackson," Wahlbon wrote. "Turns out Sarah Jackson is a porn star so I got a 0 for the whole quiz. ... I didn't know that was the case and (had) zero intention of trying to be funny or rude." 
 
 Deane responded by saying he could not judge the student's intention, only the outcome. 
 
 "The result is that you gave the name Sarah Jackson, who is a lingerie and nude model," Deane wrote. "That result meets the Title IX definition of sexual harassment." 
 
 Deane then refused to change Wahlbon's grade. 
 
 Neither Deane nor Wahlbon could be reached Friday. 
 
 Simsen said it would likely be early next week before the Office of Equity and Diversity could meet with everyone involved in the case and determine an outcome. 
 
 Meanwhile, a Twitter account that claimed to be associated with the Anonymous hacker collective said the group had shut down the university's website, utk.edu, in support of the student. The Twitter account, @UTKFree, said the group had caused one outage already and planned a second. 
 
 Simsen said the university website has not suffered any disruptions. ||||| A University of Tennessee student committed sexual harassment, according to his professor, because he wrote his lab instructor's name incorrectly: he inadvertently wrote the name of a pornographic model instead. 
 
 As punishment, the student received a grade of zero on an assignment. 
 
 But the student, Keaton Wahlbon, says the mistake was just that: a mistake. He had never even heard of the model in question—he had simply chosen a name at random. 
 
 Confused? Let me explain. Wahlbon is enrolled in Professor Bill Deane's earth science class. Recently, Deane gave the class a quiz, and one of the questions was, "What is your lab instructor's name? (if you don't remember, make something good up)." The lab instructor is a kind of teaching assistant, and indeed, Wahlbon couldn't remember her name. So he wrote in "Sarah Jackson." 
 
 "I picked a random generic name," said Wahlbon in an interview with Reason. 
 
 But "Sarah Jackson" is apparently the name of a pornographic model. When Wahlbon got the quiz back, his answer was marked "inappropriate" and he had received a grade of zero. 
 
 "I had no idea it was the name of a nude model," said Wahlbon. 
 
 Wahlbon emailed Deane, asking him to reverse the instructor's decision. In his email, Wahlbon raised some very good points: specifically, that "Sarah Jackson" is a very common name, and the top Google search results for the name weren't even inappropriate. (As a reminder, the question had even supplied the clearly-misleading instruction: "make something good up.") 
 
 Screenshots of the quiz and email are available at Total Frat Move, which first reported this story. 
 
 Deane's reply was disappointing. 
 
 "Dear Keaton," he wrote. "I have no way of determining your intention. I can only consider the result. The result is that you gave the name of Sarah Jackson, who is a lingerie and nude model. That result meets with Title IX definition of sexual harassment. The grade of zero stands and will not be changed." 
 
 Emphasis mine. According to the professor, sexual harassment requires no intention whatsoever on the part of the transgressor to give offense. It is a radically subjective crime—one could be guilty of it and have absolutely no idea. 
 
 Of course, it's no accident that Deane thinks this. The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, which is responsible for ensuring Title IX compliance, has given universities erroneous information about the definition of sexual harassment. Administrators at many campuses are now thoroughly convinced that they could lose federal funding for failing to investigate even the most absurd accusations. Just yesterday, I wrote about a student at Columbia University who was called before the Gender-Based Misconduct Office because one of his classmates objected to a remark he had made: he referred to himself as handsome. 
 
 Wahlbon tells me that he plans to appeal to the head of Tennessee's natural sciences department. I hope that someone in a position of authority at the university has the common sense to realize that the student did nothing wrong—other than failing to remember his instructor's name. He could be marked down for answering that specific question incorrectly, but he shouldn't receive a zero—and he absolutely shouldn't have to worry that he inadvertently committed sexual harassment. ||||| ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== 
 
 Keaton Wahlbon is a student at the University of Tennessee who doesn’t remember the names of his TAs, just like the rest of America. Keaton had a geology quiz with Professor Bill Deane and one of the questions on the quiz was “what is your lab instructor’s name? (if you don’t remember, make something good up).” Since Keaton didn’t remember, he put down the first generic girl name he could think of, which was Sarah Jackson. 
 
 He ended up getting a zero for that, and a comment of “inappropriate” from the TA. 
 
 Why would Sarah Jackson cause such a stir? Well, it turns out that’s the name of a porn star. Sarah Jackson is also the name of a million other girls. In fact, when you Google that name, you’ll probably have to dig a little to actually find the porn star. The first one that popped up for me was a local psychiatrist. But Keaton’s TA didn’t care. 
 
 Befuddled, Keaton emailed Bill asking for a reason why he got a zero, and for Deane to hear his side of the story. Bill wasn’t having it, and told him that it was sexual harassment under the definition of Title IX. 
 
 Seriously, how in the world can Bill sit there and claim this is sexual harassment? It’s a name, for Christ’s sakes. A name that is pretty common, too. And if your TA is so offended at the mere mention of the name of a porn star that she has to put down a 0 for the grade, she should be forced to live in a padded room. 
 
 Keaton and his parents are taking this matter to the school, and, if the school has any senses, they’ll not only give him his points back, but allow him to play some Sarah Jackson pornos during Bill’s lectures as well.. 
 
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– "Sarah Jackson" is apparently the name of a pornographic model. If you weren't previously aware of that, well, neither was Keaton Wahlbon, and his ignorance of that fact just got him into hot water at the University of Tennessee. Wahlbon is a student in Professor Bill Deane's earth science class, and on a recent quiz, there was a question reading: "What is your lab instructor's name? (if you don't remember, make something good up)." Wahlbon couldn't remember, so he wrote in "a random generic name," he tells Reason. But that name was Sarah Jackson, and when Wahlbon got his quiz back, he'd received a score of zero and his answer to that question was marked "inappropriate," TotalFratMove reports. After speaking to the teaching assistant who graded the quiz, who told him the grade would not be changed, Wahlbon emailed Deane—and the professor doubled down on the TA's decision. Despite Wahlbon explaining that he had "zero intention of trying to be funny or rude" since he had no idea Sarah Jackson was the name of a porn star, Deane responded to him, "I have no way of determining your intention. I can only consider the result. The result is that you gave the name of Sarah Jackson, who is a lingerie and nude model. That result meets with Title IX definition of sexual harassment. The grade of zero stands and will not be changed." Wahlbon told Reason on Oct. 4 he planned to appeal to the head of the natural sciences department. But on Friday, a university spokesperson told the Knoxville News Sentinel that neither Wahlbon nor the teaching assistant had filed a complaint, and that the department actually brought up the issue after reading about the incident online. University officials are now investigating. (A Berkeley professor accused of sexual harassment is suing his accusers.)