College signifies a time of change for many students — whether it be finding new hobbies, growing into one’s field of interest or making connections with peers and professors alike. While these changes are often met with joy and nostalgia, they also result in a diversely minded student body and the start of intellectual individualism. The result of this self-discovery has been a challenge for professors up until recently, as students walking away from a class with different unique experiences makes course and professor evaluations based in so-called “emotion” and “human interactions,” metrics which Eastern’s evaluation standards portray as menial and pointless. Thankfully, with the most recent amendments to our student policies, the use of AI will not only be decriminalized, but encouraged above all else.
The first wave in this rollout of new policies will be the ceasure of any anti-AI policies previously established in our curriculum. According to Provost Sparks, these policies have “brought students away from the correct answer, instead forcing them to come up with their own misinformed results.”
While the use of AI in some courses has been slowly integrated in departments such as communications, Sparks hopes that lifting these barriers to entry will allow any and all students to participate and engage in courses without needing to read or understand prerequisite material. Indeed, these dreaded prerequisites are the bane of many an adventurous freshman who dream of wandering into a senior seminar and steering the conversation without the pain of “understanding the material.”
Furthermore, these policies have stood as a technophobic monument to the belief in the importance of human rationality. This monument defames AI usage as something lesser, when in reality, AI should form the thoughts and ideas that push us forward as people. This initial set of restructuring is slated to begin in the summer online semester, the perfect environment for professors to “chill out” and “stop being prudish over AI use,” in Sparks’ words.
Once the summer test period inevitably succeeds, the full integration of AI into all courses on campus should begin in early fall. In contrast to the previous changes where students are given the option to choose the path for their education, the second wave is meant to ensure that all students are given an equal opportunity to have the exact same ideas as their peers.
While some critics call this the loss of all that is unique, Sparks has gone on to call it the “reformation of the student body into a singular correct understanding.” This step towards homogeneity is sure to encourage no further discussion or contention on previous “difficult topics”, allowing students to completely avoid these conversations and instead focus on the current weather or recent music releases by AI musicians.
Stress is not unknown to this student body or any other, yet with these new reformations to our AI integration students can now live blissfully without the worries of brainstorming or essay writing. When questioned on if any further changes to our AI policies would be made, Sparks said “My hope is that one day, when students like yourself have questions or concerns to address to me, there will be an AI version of my likeness to guide you in the most objective and best informed direction.”
If students were losing hope in the administration’s handling of AI, bold statements like this should be a comforting reassurance to all.
