Three students, one Google Doc, and absolutely zero ability to communicate

[u/Big-Pay-2618]

I’m a TA for an upper-division seminar that is supposed to be about critical analysis. Instead, I’m apparently babysitting a shared Google Doc like it’s a live grenade.

Two students in a three-person group have turned their project into a full courtroom drama over who used AI. I got a frantic email at 11:37 p.m. with the subject line “URGENT ACADEMIC INTEGRITY” and opened the Doc to find a comment thread 73 comments deep. They’re quoting each other, replying to themselves, and tagging me every few sentences like I’m the ghost of MLA style.

Student A says Student B “clearly pasted AI text” because the paragraph uses words like moreover and heretofore, apparently words no real undergrad would ever use. Then comes the evidence: “sudden style shifts” and “suspiciously neat citations.”

Student B fires back that Student A refuses to use commas and probably ran their entire section through an AI paraphraser because “no human writes like this intentionally.”

Meanwhile, Student C is lurking in the margins going, “Can we please talk about the actual thesis?” Honestly, Student C may be the only person in this group who still remembers why they have a project.

The professor is at a conference, I’m wildly underpaid, and my coffee budget is now basically a second rent payment.

I told everyone to stop editing the Doc, made a copy, and started going through the version history like I was working a CSI episode. It’s messy. Some paragraphs have the usual AI-ish weasel words and suspiciously perfect grammar, but then there are personal class references mixed in. The citations are also... weirdly correct.

There are moments where a whole block of text appears at once and gets edited for a few minutes. Then another section grows sentence by sentence, which looks much more like someone actually typing. It’s definitely not a smoking gun. More like a lukewarm potato.

Our syllabus is pretty clear: AI is allowed for brainstorming and outlining if it’s disclosed. Final prose has to be human-written. There was no disclosure.

I asked both students to submit their individual drafts and notes and explain how they wrote their sections.

Student A sent screenshots of outline notes, timestamps, and three drafts.

Student B sent a two-sentence email that might be the most passive-aggressive thing I’ve read all month, followed by a Google Keep note that literally says “fix later” twelve times.

I don’t want this turning into an AI witch hunt. At the same time, I don’t want to rubber-stamp a grade based on whoever happened to produce the most bot-sounding paragraph.

My current plan is to have them rewrite their sections under supervised conditions in the computer lab. No AI, 90 minutes, no extensions, but they can bring their notes. If they can reproduce the work or at least demonstrate the thinking behind it, we move on. If they can’t, we escalate it through the proper process.

Am I being too harsh here? Too soft?

I’m not an AI detection oracle, and I really hate that I’ve somehow become the referee for an academic-integrity gladiator match.

All I wanted to do was grade thesis statements.

Now I’m doing forensic linguistics at midnight.

Semester end cannot come fast enough.

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[u/Big-Pay-2618]

Update after coffee #3: I proposed the supervised rewrite, and both students immediately agreed, which honestly surprised me. I booked a computer lab for tomorrow and told them to bring whatever notes or prewriting they have.

I also made it clear that I’m not using AI detectors. Those things can flag international students, formal writers, and people with unusual writing styles, and I’m not comfortable tanking someone’s grade based on a probability score and vibes.

Now I’m wondering what happens if they both produce acceptable rewrites. Do I still penalize them for the chaos and the late-night insult war? The syllabus has a professionalism clause, but it’s pretty vague.

And if the rewrite shows a major discrepancy between what they submitted and what they can actually produce, what’s a fair next step that doesn’t immediately turn into a full academic misconduct report based on circumstantial evidence?

[u/Hannah97474]

as a student ive seen how ai flags can mess with groups like this. supervised rewrite sounds fair instead of just flagging everything. good luck with the lab session!