Faculty and administrators held their first meeting of the year in Mills Hall to review several developments from the summer, including a class action antitrust lawsuit that names the college among 32 schools accused of using early decision programs to affect tuition. President Safa Zaki told faculty that the college does not believe the lawsuit has merit and is working with outside counsel to defend its admission practices, and that the court process will likely take several months or longer. Zaki also reported on support for incoming international students in light of recent federal travel restrictions and said student affairs is assisting students with any visa complications on a case-by-case basis.
Zaki noted that the college is exempt from a recently passed endowment tax increase because it enrolls fewer than 3,000 tuition-paying students. She said a committee formed in anticipation of the tax will not need to make immediate budget cuts and that the group may serve as a pilot for a future college-wide budget committee. The conversation framed institutional priorities alongside ongoing external pressures as faculty consider planning for the academic year.
Senior vice president and chief information officer Michael Cato described the college´s new use of LibreChat, an interface that lets students, staff and faculty test premium models from multiple generative artificial intelligence providers and compare outputs. Cato said the platform allows users to run the same prompt across models and to refine results by switching models. Dale Syphers, physics professor and chair of the Committee on Teaching and Classroom Practice, said the committee is developing guidance for faculty on student use of artificial intelligence, noting that about 40 percent of current students likely used artificial intelligence in high school. Eric Chown, professor of digital and computational studies and director of the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity Advisory Committee, urged faculty to make clear, specific artificial intelligence policies in syllabi and to be explicit when prohibiting use.
