A Massachusetts couple claims that their son’s high school attempted to derail his future by giving him detention and a bad grade on an assignment he wrote using generative AI.
An old and powerful force has entered the fraught debate over generative AI in schools: litigious parents angry that their child may not be accepted into a prestigious university.
In what appears to be the first case of its kind, at least in Massachusetts, a couple has sued their local school district after it disciplined their son for using generative AI tools on a history project. Dale and Jennifer Harris allege that the Hingham High School student handbook did not explicitly prohibit the use of AI to complete assignments and that the punishment visited upon their son for using an AI tool—he received Saturday detention and a grade of 65 out of 100 on the assignment—has harmed his chances of getting into Stanford University and other elite schools.
Yeah, I’m 100% with the school on this one.
What would the parents’ stance be if he’d asked someone else to write his assignment for him?
Same thing.
Dale and Jennifer Harris allege that the Hingham High School student handbook did not explicitly prohibit the use of AI to complete assignments
I’ll bet you the student handbook doesn’t explicitly prohibit taking a shit on his desk, but he’d sure as Hell be disciplined for doing it. This whole YOU DIDN’T EXPLICITLY PROHIBIT THIS SO IT’S FINE!!!111oneoneeleventy! thing that a certain class of people have is, to my mind, a clear sign of sociopathy.
Basically their stance is that the school policy didn’t explicitly say he couldn’t use AI, so perhaps the policy specifically mentions another person doing the assignment?
You know, now that I think about it, if I were in an admissions office I’d be keeping a quiet database of news stories like this so I know which people I would automatically reject no matter what their scores.
I probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of making a database of students who might never apply to my school, but now I’m wondering about the legality of background checks or even cursory Google searches as part of the admissions process, because it would surely show up there.
Yep, make that part of their so called permanent record.
If you work in a job for a year or more (sometimes less), it will become very clear which of your co-workers cheated their way through school. They’re the absolute worst to deal with professionally, and I hate them for constantly producing slop.
their stance is that the school policy didn’t explicitly say he couldn’t use AI,
According to the school’s lawyers, the policy against AI was stated in a presentation that the student attended, and the policy against AI was handed out at a parent’s night and on an online portal, see pg 4-6 of the following: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.275605/gov.uscourts.mad.275605.13.0.pdf
Reminds me of some bass-ackwards story I read about boardgames. A couple was saying “the rules don’t forbid this” so they were putting pieces in the wrong places. What a nightmare that would have been.
People who do that at my games table get uninvited from games nights. I might also point out that the rules don’t forbid me tossing my glass of baijiu into their faces but they’re probably thankful I’m not doing it.
