Pranksters barred from campus entry


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Los Angeles Superior Court of Justice Judge James C. Chalfant issued a temporary restraining order against pranksters Ernest Kanevsky and Yuguo Bai Friday, prohibiting them from campus entry and all other University-owned properties. The order follows the lawsuit USC filed Wednesday against Kanevsky and Bai, who infiltrated classrooms during live lectures on three separate occasions since Fall 2021.

The court scheduled a hearing for April 28 to determine whether a preliminary injunction should be issued against the defendants, who caused disturbance and fright among students and faculty members while filming prank Youtube videos. If granted, the injunction would stop or mandate action brought by USC against Kanevsky and Bai, neither of whom are affiliated with the University, before a decision to resolve the lawsuit is made. 

USC lawyers urged for the issuance of a temporary restraining order against the duo, court papers filed Thursday show. 

“Simply put, there is no public benefit to terrorizing students to the point where they are running out of lecture halls for fear of their lives through the perpetration of prank classroom takeovers in order to garner a handful of likes on YouTube,” the lawyers stated in the court papers.

The defendants’ most recent prank occurred March 29, when Kanevsky entered a Taper Hall lecture about the Holocaust, pretended to be a member of the “Russian Mafia” and demanded that Bai, who was already there, pay him the $50,000 that his father “owes.” The staged confrontation prompted students to flee the building and resulted in the detainment and later arrest of Kanevsky and Bai by the L.A. Police Department. 

USC’s lawsuit alleges that the pair’s “panic-inducing classroom takeovers” caused irreparable physical and emotional damage to students and professors, financial harm from increased Department of Public Safety visits and emotional support and loss of instructional time, among other detriments. Court papers state that the March 29 disruption led to a “drastic drop in student attendance the next time the class was scheduled to meet in person as (USC’s) students were simply too scared to return to the classroom.”

USC’s Chief Threat Assessment Officer Patrick Prince submitted a sworn declaration in support of the temporary restraining order against Kanevsky and Bai. 

“Given the tragic recurrence of campus violence throughout the country, we are a nation on guard against the very type of mayhem that is an objectively reasonable response to the defendants’ outrageous, selfish, reckless and dangerous actions,” Prince said.

It is not clear whether Kanevsky and Bai have legal representation, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.