Student “indiscriminately copied and pasted text,” including AI hallucinations.
A federal court yesterday ruled against parents who sued a Massachusetts school district for punishing their son who used an artificial intelligence tool to complete an assignment.
Dale and Jennifer Harris sued Hingham High School officials and the School Committee and sought a preliminary injunction requiring the school to change their son’s grade and expunge the incident from his disciplinary record before he needs to submit college applications. The parents argued that there was no rule against using AI in the student handbook, but school officials said the student violated multiple policies.
The Harris’ motion for an injunction was rejected in an order issued yesterday from US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. US Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson found that school officials “have the better of the argument on both the facts and the law.”
“On the facts, there is nothing in the preliminary factual record to suggest that HHS officials were hasty in concluding that RNH [the Harris’ son, referred to by his initials] had cheated,” Levenson wrote. “Nor were the consequences Defendants imposed so heavy-handed as to exceed Defendants’ considerable discretion in such matters.”
Students have different schedules all the time. Failing classes is part of reality. There are ways to make back the time. None are pleasant, but he brought it entirely on himself by being a cheater.
Literally nothing short of failing the class can result in the student “correcting the mistake”. It’s actively rewarding extremely unacceptable behavior.
Yeah, we’re in an agree to disagree situation. I don’t think either of us have enough information. I’m not confident failing the class is needed. Obviously this going to court is too far, and I agree with the court le decision, but in terms of punishment I don’t feel failure of the class is needed, given the information available. I’m not against it given a more detailed write up if the incident, but I would need to see a lot more information.