As a fourth-year student, it’s become increasingly obvious which of my classmates are using ChatGPT. If I can tell after four years of university, I can only imagine how glaring it must be to my professors. Yet every semester still begins the same way: a full class wasted on hollow warnings about plagiarism and AI, followed by little to no enforcement once it comes to submitting.
But that’s only part of the problem. In Communications classes, students are allowed two unexcused absences per course, exceed that limit and you risk failing. Yet still, I’m flabbergasted by the number of strangers who materialize on presentation day, having not attended a single class since securing their spot on day one to avoid being replaced by a waitlisted student.
I firmly believe professors should stand by their own policies. If you’re sick of grading AI-generated-slop, give it a 0. Fail the course, even. Watching students run their ChatGPT output through Grammarly or a paraphrasing tool and receiving the same grades as those who did the work honestly is infuriating. If you’re going to devote an entire class to laying out your rules, at least have the conviction to enforce them.
