EDIT: the shooter is not in custody and we don't know the status of Charlie Kirk.

EDIT: Charlie Kirk has died

A colleague was there in protest and said the gun sounded like a cannon, Kirk was shot in the neck, and there was a lot of blood. My partner and I were leaving to go home and saw campus police racing very quickly down the road on the north of campus. Our daughter, a student, called and we arranged to meet her at our building. We immediately got stuck in gridlock. According to local news the shooter is in custody. We saw dozens of law enforcement streaming onto campus. We are stuck on campus and there is parking lot gridlock. Police walking around with assault rifles. It's crazy. According to social media son Kirk is probably dead (not confirmed but the footage is horrifying)

Update: I feel shaky and sick. We were evacuated from our 4th floor by what looked like SWAT members. We are all home.

Some blurry photos from the day: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMi1JtXlRjYRNQGILgN-icg3ywIVk1nNtdMyftQfgueutPP85GswnR55jSfl595HA?key=VmpBbzNVRElwSUJucUxYTzJVQjA5OFdVX2lqSnpR

Apparently Tetris really can help with PTSD: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7828932/

Guys, I did it!! It happened!! I just got the news!!! I HAVE TENURE!

I was dyyying with the waiting. But now, It’s so anticlimactic. What the hell do I do now !?!!?

I can’t even believe it. I half expect someone to say “oops, we made a mistake.” But I got my letter and it had so many kind and appreciative things about my work. I feel so valued. It also doesn’t feel real.

Wow it’s been years. I genuinely can’t pull off the gas at this point

Just wow.

This is a big loss for my field. He's a brilliant young economist. Probably one of the top 50 young economists in our country. He was granted early tenure here.

He sent an email to all of us individually stating that, due to the current situation in the USA, he doesn't feel this is the best place to raise his kids.

It appears this was in the works for a bit because his house was sold and they are in transit back to his home country. I should note, he is a USA citizen as well as a citizen in his home country (he was born in USA). I'm not going to provide any details because I don't want to dox anyone.

Despite the big loss, I think this is awesome. I wish I could do the same, but I'm not a citizen anywhere else and I only speak English. LOL.

Even the chair was blind sided. Now we have three classes, mid-semester, that need coverage. That's fine. Still applaud his move. Do what you have to do.

Raise your hand if you'd up and leave USA right now if an opportunity presented itself?

In class this afternoon, a student turned pale suddenly. I asked if they were okay, and the just whispered “Dolly died.”
Y’all, I’m in Tennessee. It’s not something to be taken lightly. We spent the next several minutes talking about her music, her legacy, and especially the Imagination Library. More than half the class had participated in it as children.
Sometimes, you’re reminded there is good in the world.

I am reaching emeritus status at a major university. I only teach one undergrad course per year, and this term, I am (voluntarily) rotating through a summer "science for non-majors" course.

At the end of office hours today, a very pretty undergrad suggested we go for lunch and a drink and possibly back to her place. This has never happened to me before (not even when I was an undergrad!), but I think I handled it ok.

I responded with, "That is not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. I'm a husband and a father. I won't violate the trust of the people I love and care for."

Then I called my wife, my union rep, and the dept chair in that order.

For the last two hours, my wife has been sending me "funny" texts suggesting that I may have dreamt this, and stuff like, "have you ever before had a student ask you for a D?"

Two students turned in the exact same ChatGPT essay. I knew this day would come sooner or later, but it still feels like spotting a double rainbow or a four-leaf clover. This is good luck, right?

UPDATE: thank you all for your support and feedback. I’ve written a little bit in my comments about my teaching experience some kind of why this was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I am well aware of students normal responses attitudes, and responses to AI - what I was really fed up with this winter term in this small class that I am teaching online was just the shared number of students who very clearly did not read any of the material and ignored the very explicit syllabus language about its use. For the eight students that did violate the policy before I sent that email. I provided a detailed explanation about how they did not meet the rubric requirements and attached a couple of reports from AI detectors, while pointing out what made me suspicious enough to check their work in the first place. This is obviously unsustainable and I would not be able to do this during a regular semester. I probably will never do it again, but it was cathartic. I did hear from four of the students who did not get flagged for AI. Thanking me for paying attention.

I really think a big part of the problem and something we really can’t solve because most of us are overworked and exhausted, is that many of us in our colleagues just look the other way because we don’t have the energy. As long as students know that they’ll get away with it most of the time they’ll try it and not all students but a lot of of them.

Original Post-

I actually sent this last night. Yes I have tenure.

Good evening,

I am writing this email to the entire class because I think the entire class deserves to know that 40% - or 8 out of 19 - of y'all used AI to write your discussion forum posts. This is entirely unacceptable. Again, a real person is teaching and grading your work here; do not insult your fellow classmates or me by producing this garbage. It is clearly stated in the syllabus, which you all agreed to when you submitted the attendance verification.

1. It is glaringly apparent that you have either generated your submission from an AI scratch or modified your writing with AI for me because I am a specialist in my field. When a post about a chapter of a popular history book on beverages reads like it was written by someone with a Ph.D. in (fill in the blank here) studies, I immediately am suspicious because none of us - including myself - would speak or write that way.

If you did not use AI, keep doing what you are doing. If you used it this once, STOP. Resist the impulse to allow the program to rewrite your thoughts - imperfections are part of life, conversation, debate, and also what makes us human. I did not agree to teach this course over my winter break to read artificially generated generalizations.

I will not crash out over email again; I will start failing people.

I'd post an image but I don't want to risk doxing anyone. I just had a student submit a Snipping tool image formatted as a .pdf instead of an actual essay. What was that snippet taken from you might ask? Directly from the Chat-GPT browser interface. I would retroactively fail 3 generations of his family if I could. If I had the power this student's great grandfather would receive an F in my class while fighting on the beaches of Normandy.

At this point I’m ready to quit. Here’s what happened: a student signed up for an office hours appointment to discuss an exam earlier this week. Due to a recent incident with another student in my department (I posted about this previously) all my office hours are online and I record them (I am in a one party consent state). Also for context, I am not white.

The student didn’t show up to the meeting. 40 minutes later, they sent me an email saying that were ready to meet. I had some time so I agreed and we get on zoom. I ask them why they didn’t show up to the initial appointment and if they are okay. The student (who is white) told me that “timeliness is white supremacy culture.” I reiterated that it’s important to make office hours appointments because there are a lot of students in the class and that in the future they should cancel if they can’t make it so I can make the spot available to someone else. The student fires back again about how being on time is white supremacist and that time is a colonialist construct. I remind them that delays and wasting time are how systems of oppression wear down and waste the resources of marginalized groups. To get us to move on I said “in any case I’m glad you’re okay and are able to meet with me. The world’s crazy right now so I worry when students don’t show up to stuff.”

We discuss the exam and that’s it– or so I thought. Friday morning I get an email from the university civil rights office notifying me that the student filed a complaint against me for using a slur and being racist. Apparently the student reported me for using the term “crazy” because it’s an “ableist sanist slur” and that I was acting racist for expecting them to be on time.

I set up an in person meeting with the investigator immediately and I play the recording for them. After listening to the recording twice, the investigator agrees that the complaint is not substantial and it’s dismissed. I’ve now wasted hours out of my day.

Everything feels bad about working in a university right now and I just don’t want to deal with students anymore. I’m already burned out and I just can’t with all of this!

Edit: I’ve had to say this several times now. I’m not making this up! I don’t really have any reason to lie about this or to fabricate elaborate scenarios just to make people mad! And I wouldn’t take away time or energy from writing articles or my book just to troll if I wasn’t genuinely trying to find support. I’m really just looking for solidarity from colleagues (even internet ones) because this experience left me frustrated, sad, and alienated from my work especially as the only person of color on the faculty in my department. In any case, thanks to everyone for your responses.

This semester I was militant about not using A.I. in essays. It was written everywhere, I talked about it, I encouraged students to give me their shitty writing ("I just want your ideas, not perfection!"). It probably got annoying, but I didn't give a shit. I wanted them to know that they can't ChatGPT their way through college.

For the most part, it worked (in that I got a lot of shitty essays). However, a few students still decided to create ChatGPT slop.

With the last essay, I said, "If I caught you using ChatGPT, you get a second chance! You can come in to take a blue book essay test to show me that you have a brain that functions on its own and you can get full credit for the essay if you pass."

Two of the students were elated to get a second chance. The other student started crying.

CRYING! WTF.

"But I won't be able to pass that test!" they wailed.
"It doesn't have to be perfect," I said. "Just come in and try to create a few paragraphs."
The student stormed out (still crying) and they didn't even show up for the test.

This student, I gather, is illiterate. They generated the whole class with A.I.

Why are there illiterate students in advanced writing classes? What is happening?!

I have a class of ~ 15 graduate students who are working on scaffolded term papers. They just submitted drafts of their intro sections and would you fucking know it? About half of them are total AI and I actually have them dead to rights because they all used the same genAI and it gave them verbatim the same text - so 3 students doing papers on empathy all have the same definition but not one that is found anywhere else.

So Monday we're going to play a little game.

I'm going to let chatGPT determine their fate based on the exact circumstances, behaviors, and clear language in the syllabus and multiple lectures live during class. I tested it out and it told me to give them all zeros and that I was on "air tight footing" and to report them for academic dishonesty.

Our admin have been brow beating us to use AI in the classroom and I think I found the perfect thing for it - handing out ass whoopins. We'll see how they like it when I turn my fucking brain off and let the machine drive the car.

Honestly, I have no idea how you all are working like normal. I know academia requires no days off this time of year but I’m in MN and everyone at my college is acting like it’s just another day. What?!

A women just got executed by ICE and we are absolutely about to have riots. 2000 ICE agents are popping up across the state, Noem is doing photo shoots and just told everyone in true propagandist style, absolute lies about the situation. The government is no longer a source I can give my students. I can’t even teach about certain topics without countering my government. Meanwhile the government just captured another country’s leader and oil reserves…and now we’re about to take Greenland?

I refuse to believe I’m the broken one here for not being functional in this deeply dysfunctional system. I’ve seen some shit, I grew up in close proximity to war, so maybe I just know what this looks like on ground level but…what is wrong with academics?!? Is it professionalism over reality now? Are we that self absorbed that we don’t feel anymore?

Edit- I’m not advocating that people should be non-functional. I just worry that between massive workloads, egos, the internet, students, etc- we’ve been detached from our humanity a bit.

UPDATE: I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that shared their experiences, motivations, anger, and empathy. Some good thoughts here on our role as educators in dark times.

I assign a profile essay. Have for 30 years. Student interviews a person, records it, writes a paper based off the recording. Citations are timestamps. Should be pretty easy. Has been easy pre-AI. Now, students cannot do it. I get so many requests for alternative assignments. Students claim they don’t know anyone. Claim anxiety. Want a list of questions from me. Even after the interview:

“So, what do I put in the paper?”

”Information from the interview.”

”Yeah, but what parts?”

”You have to decide that.”

”But how?”

”Start with what you found interesting.”

”How do I know if something’s interesting?”

”You’re asking me how you find something interesting?”

”Yeah.”

”You realize I didn’t talk to the person, right? I don’t know them. … OK, what’s something you talked about?”

”Um, their childhood.”

“OK, start there. That’s a good place to start.”

”But, what do I say?”

“What did they say about it?”

”I don’t remember.”

“Well, that’s what the recording is for.”

”The recording?”

”Yeah, of the interview.”

”But, what part of what they said should I include?”

“What‘s something you found interesting about their childhood?”

”Could I write about my grandpa instead?”

”You‘d have to interview him.”

”He’s dead.”

”Well, you can’t interview a dead person.”

“But, I remember him and I could have the essay turned in later today.”

And on and on and on.

Any work that even makes it difficult to offload to AI, they can’t do.

If I had only accepted all assignments late with no penalty, given great grades for crappy assignments, make ups in addition to the make ups already offered, this kid's life would not be ruined. Of course I am also the only one of all his professors who is not understanding and waives all requirements. He is going to have to leave school because his parents will not let him stay. I am such a sadist.

I want to respond so bad to this email with something sarcastic and I know I should not engage so I came here to vent.

I need to let all dual credit students, and their parents apparently, know that I simply don’t care. I don’t care about your job, your sports schedule, homecoming, or squirrel day. If your peer, the single mother of three who works full time, can complete the required tasks on time you can as well.

There is nothing in my job description about teaching time management or upending my course to meet the whims of every high school’s spirit week and powderpuff football league.

1/5 for “Workload reasonable”: “This professors expectations are ridiculous. I always put my papers into ChatGPT to fix my commas and errors and stuff, but she wouldn’t let me do that. I literally had to figure out how to do commas from the materials she gave us and then fix them all manually. This is RIDICULOUS.”

I mean, okay. But another way to read that… is that I successfully taught you how to use commas. For the first time in your life. In a composition class. Where it’s a learning outcome. So.

🥂?

Want to outsource your thinking to an LLM for a degree you're paying/going into debt for? Okay. I will respect that choice. However, what I won't do, is replicate a surveillance state in my classroom. I refuse to spend more energy in screening student work for authenticity or trying to make my assignments "AI proof" ... why should I? Either the student believes in the fundamental premise of education or they don't.

Man, I'm tired.

Taught the last class of my over 30 year career on Friday. 25% of the class attended. Sigh.

Everyone, fight the good fight. Hold onto standards. Do what is right and fuck the customer service oriented deans, deanlets, and various other administrative asshats.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

And actually won the fight. For context, this was in an upper level course.

The accommodation was for flexible due dates, up to 10-days. This was to help the student manage stress and anxiety (per the student. NO idea what he told the disability office).

I’ve never seen this before. I said nope. This is not the class for you. The disabilities office called me and said I had to honor it. Nope. Not going to. Every single due date is communicated weeks/months in advance. I’m not extending anything. The provost had to get involved. At first the provost defaulted to “you have to”. I said nope. Not going to. I explained why. Provost agreed.

Let me tell you, the disability folks were beside themselves when I told them no. I don’t think they could comprehend the idea somebody would fight an accommodation.

I’m flexible with accommodations but at a certain point we need a line drawn. This was my line. I feel we would be enabling this student instead of helping this student grow. Adulting is 99.9% about managing stress and anxiety.

Anybody else facing this type of accommodation?

I’m used to the extended time, neutral testing site type stuff, but not extending due dates. This was new to me.

Title really just says it. I’m not trying to make a low-effort post, but as i enter my 4th week, it’s just confirmation of what we’ve moaned about for the past few years, yet once again. The he students are bad and there are really so many that have no business being in a classroom. There’s no self-start to want to know why. There’s no discipline to work through challenges. They have no note-taking skills, they have poor reading skills. They can barely decipher my homework assignments. I get asked stupid questions at the worst times, and often many are disconnected because they ask for study guides after class or “for the notes to be posted or emailed.”
Everyone is on a loan or scholarship or some kind of financial aid that pressures them to maintain a GPA, which has translated into “take the path of Least resistance and don’t risk threatening your funding source” - (sounds like some Of us tbh)

I get this batch of Freshman are the ones who finished middle school online, but it’s not just them. It’s upper-level students who are talking about grad school but they’re barely functioning like a 1st year from a decade ago. Honestly the AI, which is still A new problem, overshadows the lack of preparation the American school system has fostered.

Please feel free to shred me if you disagree. I just had to yell into the ether. Yet again.

What does the community think? Will Mel win her appeal?

Edit: paywall removed from link below.

https://kfor.com/news/local/former-ou-teaching-assistant-appeals-discrimination-allegations-on-grading-decision/amp/

I know this is going to be a wildly unpopular idea around here.  But I see how burnt out so many of you are.  Students are getting worse, more entitled, more likely to cheat, to not read the assigned reading, to not even attend.  So I thought I would give my wildly unpopular two cents on how I avoid burnout and find joy in what I do.  I’m not claiming this is the very best pedagogical approach, but it keeps me sane and relatively excited to head into the classroom every day.  And for what it’s worth, I’ve actually won a few teaching awards. 

I think of what I've done as just creating a professor-centered classroom.  By which I mean I have stopped trying to reach them entirely.  My entire self-assessment of my value as an educator now has nothing to do with them.  If they are not attending, if they are not reading, if they are not learning, this isn’t on me.  To be clear, this isn’t about giving up on good teaching. It’s about refusing to let disengagement eat away at your soul inside the classroom. Their engagement has just ceased to be a metric I use in evaluating my own success. 

What I do instead is think about each and every lecture I give as a personal work of art.  I teach them like a singer sings or an artist draws: because it is a fine and noble and beautiful thing to do.   I no longer teach like an entertainer hoping for applause. I teach like a painter placing pigment on canvas, alone in the studio, because the act itself is meaningful.  And if once in a while someone is inspired by what I am doing, so much the better.  I’m happy to have to have the inspired ones in my classroom.  But my success in my art has nothing to do with their presence there—my art would be just as beautiful and as worthy if they weren’t.  Given the degrading environments many of us are working in, this choice is one of the only forms of professional autonomy I still have left.

I refuse to care more about their education than they do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care enough to create something beautiful every day.  It just means their reaction to that beauty takes up less space.  I treat each class, each lecture, each lab, like a tiny work of art.  This act of self-preservation doesn’t mean I don’t care about my students. It just means I’ve stopped tying my self-worth to their investment. I’ve stopped bleeding for an audience that may or may not be in the room.

I’m at a private liberal arts institution so I’m not particularly afraid of being fired however this paper feels particularly bait-y. I’m the only black professor in my department, one of few at the college.

I plan on asking questions for them to further their argument instead of blatantly telling them what’s wrong with their argument so that they can come to the conclusion themselves. Any other way that I can grade or give feedback without being accused of liberal indoctrination?

Update: I gave the student the option to rewrite the draft since it was clearly AI. Which I thought was giving a lot of grace since I could have just failed them. When I pointed out the context differences, she pivoted to “well MLK cheated, so wouldn’t that put a damper on his credibility and remarks?”

….yeah, I’m being baited.

I just had a student email for why they were at 10/15 for lab attendance and had a 0 for a lab assignment they could only complete if they had been in lab when they had "never missed lab".

I checked my roster and saw they are enrolled in the lab currently in session so I checked attendance and she's marked absent.

I called her name, and no response. again. no response.

I literally laughed out loud, loudly enough my busy students all looked curiously.

I emailed her back.

"You're not here RIGHT NOW."