That’s the question that Michael Loconto has been pondering for months now.

Loconto was chairman of the Boston School Committee when he met with his moment of infamy last October. Several hours into a meeting on Zoom in which the School Committee voted to temporarily overhaul the admissions standards for the city’s exam schools, Loconto was captured on a hot microphone mocking the names of Asians who were waiting to speak.

His downfall was as swift as it was surprising: He resigned the next day, under fire for his comments.

What should have been Loconto’s proudest moment in the role — helping to engineer a huge step toward equity in the BPS — had become just the opposite. He quickly retreated from public view.

His would not be the last moment of Zoom infamy; other public officials, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, have seen their reputations upended by comments on Zoom, including a Lowell School Committee member who resigned recently after using an anti-Semitic slur.

Still, the case of Loconto has fascinated me, partly because it seemed so out of character.