Melody Norman, Contributing Writer
Evolving at a frighteningly quick rate, ChatGPT and other AI tools have invaded the academic world to offer convenient and adaptive tools for students. These options have grown increasingly popular in schools, despite being revealed as problematic and unreliable. Personal experience has inspired me to focus on AI’s role in academic dishonesty.
Sewanee was and still is my dream school. One of the many aspects that captivated me about the University of the South was the strong Honor Code and academic integrity. I believed these things were taken seriously by mostly everyone here, but as I worked through my first semester, I was met with contradiction after contradiction to this idea. I witnessed cheating far more than I expected to. And the major accomplice to these violations was AI.
For example, during a lecture class last semester, I watched two students use ChatGPT to help write an essay for a different class. The tabs switched between the essays and ChatGPT several times, and anyone sitting in the row behind could see it. Let me emphasize that this is not an honest or beneficial writing process. A 2025 MIT study that compared essay writing with and without the help of ChatGPT found that the writers who used ChatGPT had lower neural connectivity and brain engagement; they also struggled to quote the essay they’d just written. The study emphasizes that the ChatGPT-users “performed worse … at all levels: neural, linguistic, scoring.” Academic honesty calls for students to be present and diligent in their work.
I recall several cases of students cheating in my Spanish class; most were using some form of AI. When I was finished with one of our earliest exams and about to leave, I noticed a student hunched over his darkened screen—but not too darkened for me to recognize the ChatGPT page. Once, while taking a quiz in the hallway without the teacher present, the student next to me pulled out Google Lens on his phone to scan the test. When I told him, “Don’t do that,” he asked me, with all seriousness, “Why not?”
Later, during another quiz, a different student next to me had ChatGPT open in a little window on top of the quiz. He finished quickly, of course, only having to copy-and-paste, and thanked the teacher. It was a six-question quiz.
My class once discussed the Honor Code in a frankly disappointing way. After encouraging the class to raise their hands if they would break some parts of the Code, the instructor asked us, “What AI tools do you use for your homework?” and a few students explained how ChatGPT or one of its relatives offers shortcuts through their work, such as scanning a math homework question and generating the answer. While the use of AI may not be automatically considered cheating, the nature of this entire discussion strayed very far from upholding or defending the Honor Code.
Was it a coincidence I saw so many people using ChatGPT, or has cheating with AI become a trend at Sewanee? If it has, what does this mean for Sewanee?
Even if we set aside the social, environmental and psychological impacts, using AI for learning proves counterproductive. For example, a 2025 research article from the Educational Psychology Review emphasized that “developing human knowledge and skills remains crucial, especially for tasks requiring deep understanding, ethical considerations, and creative problem-solving, which cannot be entirely outsourced to AI.”
Furthermore, the article, titled “Looking Beyond the Hype: Understanding the Effects of AI on Learning,” explains how large language models, a type of AI system like ChatGPT or Gemini, “provide outputs that can be misleading, biased, or incorrect.” Overall, AI-enhanced learning can be less effective for students compared to non-AI alternatives. Although it may be faster and frictionless, using AI replaces the learning process and intellectual growth that school offers us. Learning is not meant to be fast and frictionless.
Also, isn’t the college experience about more than just completing assignments? Dean of the College Jennifer Cooley, when asked for an important message about AI for students, said,
“What it doesn’t have are the things that are most critical to your development as a college-aged person…This is the perfect place to be making stupid mistakes and smart mistakes because they’re all going to help you in the long run when you go to face life after college.”
This isn’t the first time the campus community has talked about the role of AI at Sewanee. The Sewanee Purple covered a campus-wide discussion about a supposed AI policy and what that would mean for students, staff and faculty. In a Sep. 30, 2025 email, Cooley announced the launch of the Sewanee AI Task Force in order to draft an AI policy, saying she “would like the policy to be reflective of our institutional values and mission, and to be useful!”
We should also consider whether or not AI disrupts the community we prioritize at Sewanee. Cooley explained that an important aspect of liberal arts is the ability to make connections.
She said, “a lot of that is built on trust. It’s built on relationships and learning from one another, learning to lean on one another, depend on one another. And when this [AI] tool comes in and interrupts that relationship-rich education, I think it’s especially upsetting in a place like Sewanee. I think that ethics also means something different here because of the Honor Code and because of the fact that the Honor Code is generated and managed by students for other students. So I think that there’s really a deep promise that students make to one another.”
Cooley summarized her message about AI in a wise warning: “I would say if you become reliant on that, you do so at your own peril as a human.”
To those who cheat and use ChatGPT: I encourage you to consider the opportunities Sewanee truly offers you. What parts of the work and learning process were not included in the program you committed to and paid for? If you think a challenge warrants cheating, then I think you underestimate your own mind. If you simply don’t care about the assignments or the general education classes, then I beg you to reconsider your values and see how they compare to any liberal arts college.
And lastly, if you could go back in time to the Honor Code signing, would you pledge again, knowing that you will cheat over and over again and consult AI instead of your own mind? Would you once again look your potential in the face before betraying it?