Disclosure: The advisor of The Rambler, David Ramsey, is a co-founder of Human Intelligence.
This fall, students were met with a total surprise: a big red ChatGPT button was added to their MyTransy portal.
Now, a new student-led coalition is asking the questions on everybody’s mind: Who decided this, and why didn’t anyone else get a say? And they’re asking the university not to re-up its $120,000 investment in contracts with major AI companies next year, requesting that those funds instead be reinvested into “human-centered education” that more directly benefits students. The group began a petition effort this month and have collected 324 signatures thus far from students, faculty, and staff.
The petition effort grew out of Human Intelligence (Hi!), a Faculty Learning Community co-founded by creative writing professor David Ramsey and art professor Kurt Gohde. FLCs are typically faculty study groups that meet to discuss various pedagogical issues; Hi! is the first to also include students. According to an email from the group, its purpose is to “promote human-centered education, explore possibilities for embodied learning, take a critical look at AI in higher education, and create resources for students and faculty interested in AI resistance.”
“Something I’ve heard a lot from students and faculty alike is that they had no real input on the university’s decision,” Ramsey said. “Many of us believe these products are actively harmful to higher education. The petition idea came from students saying, ‘We weren’t given a voice, so let’s take the initiative and make our voices heard.’”
The petition drive is supported by Hi! Faculty, but the campaign is entirely student-led and organized.
“That’s important because it’s the students’ education that is being affected the most,” said senior Alice Beatty, the primary organizer of the petition campaign. “AI is incredibly detrimental to our ability to think for ourselves. I can confidently say that most of the student body—even those that use AI—would rather this money be spent on scholarships, more dining options, accessibility for disabled students, outdoor seating options… the list goes on.”
The petition drive began on March 3, with student organizers armed with clipboards setting up a table in the Campus Center breezeway. Despite no advertising or outreach, the students collected 226 signatures in just three hours.
“All of us in Hi! were so proud to see what these students pulled off,” Ramsey said. “I think it’s a measure both of the confidence they gained from collaborating with professors on the Hi! FLC and the genuine passion many students feel about the serious concerns with so-called generative AI in higher education.”
The group has continued to collect signatures in the Campus Center, and is planning to expand their efforts this week to academic buildings and the library. They also hope to target each fraternity, sorority, and sports team; attempt to ask each faculty and staff member on campus to sign; and set up a way to sign electronically.
Thus far, the group has collected signatures from 296 students (roughly a third of the total student body), 18 staff, and 10 faculty members.
The petition’s ask is simple: “We request that Transy discontinue its contracts with Google and OpenAI for ‘AI’ consumer products for the next academic year, and reinvest the $120,000 spent on those products into human-centered education.”
“We’re avoiding an extremist stance,” Schultz explained. “The sentiment at its most rudimentary is that this money would be better spent on something else. People signing fall under a pretty wide umbrella. Adopters, rejecters, and ignorers of generative AI in education can all feasibly get behind this idea.
For most students the petitioners spoke to, this effort was the very first time they had heard anything at all about the contracts. Most were shocked by the size of the university’s investment in AI products that are widely available for free.
“The most common response was just ‘What?’” Schultz said.
The lack of student awareness—and what appears to be the Transy administration’s lack of transparency—is central to the group’s argument. The petition is not solely about reversing the contracts; it’s also about advocating for student involvement on a wider scale.
The contracts themselves have been highly contentious since the university purchased three AI products—ChatGPT from OpenAI, and Gemini and NotebookLM from Google—and distributed them to everyone on campus last semester. The $120,000 price tag of these products had not been previously publicly reported when The Rambler learned these figures last semester.
In The Rambler’s January report on the AI contracts, President Brien Lewis and Amanda Sarratore, the university’s vice president for infrastructure & chief information officer, stressed the issue of privacy in explaining the purchase (Sarratore, who directed IT on campus, stepped down from her position last week). Instead of the standard AI products, the university acquired custom versions that OpenAI and Google promise will protect users’ data and privacy. As The Rambler reported in January, Transy can make a written request, no more than once per year, for OpenAI’s most recent independent audit report regarding privacy and security, as well as summary details of certain other audits or security reports, “upon reasonable request.”
Critics of the university’s purchase are skeptical. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Google have paid out large settlements and fines for breaking privacy agreements with customers (none of which threatened their business models).
“Given that history, I wouldn’t trust their promises of privacy, even if they offer a third party audit,” Gohde said. “I couldn’t advise students to trust them either.”
Ramsey said he viewed these promises as a marketing ploy to infiltrate college campuses with a large potential user base. “Even if I trusted these companies,” he added, “why do AI apps get a special deal? Many of our students use TikTok or Instagram or Snapchat or any number of other apps that collect their information.”
On March 16, I joined organizers in the Campus Center as they sought signatures from students and others walking down the breezeway.
Two juniors who the petitioners flagged down, one a baseball player and one a lacrosse player, admitted that they had used ChatGPT for nearly every single writing assignment they’ve received this academic year (each asked to remain anonymous).
“Bro, if I had to do an FYRS paper again, I couldn’t without Chat,” the baseball player said.
“And that’s sad,” the lacrosse player replied. “Like, I wish I could write again, and I know that it’s bad, but I just don’t have time.”
“It’s just easier,” the baseball player said. “It sucks, but it’s easier.”
Despite their constant AI usage, their guilt led them to sign the petition.
“Even students who use ChatGPT and other generative AI products fairly regularly thought it was a poor decision to invest so much in tools that were already free to use online,” Schultz said.
First-year Annie Kunkel, another Hi! organizer, said that many students approached the table with great enthusiasm without being asked, some even running over to show their support.
“They didn’t even need to hear the details of Transy’s contract,” Kunkel said. “Just a few keywords—‘anti-AI’ and ‘petition’ were all they needed to sign’.”
Some students declined to sign, either due to indifference or disagreement (or really needing to get to class). One student who declined to sign said, “I just don’t think it’s that bad.” Another questioned whether the entire $120,000 investment should be redirected elsewhere. He suggested a smaller investment in AI products, with the rest toward other priorities.
It’s not just students signing. “The fact that many faculty and staff members are echoing a lot of the sentiments and criticisms of AI we voiced and developed through the Hi! FLC is encouraging,” Schultz said. “They want the best for students and agree that these contracts aren’t it.”
Beth Tuttle, mother of a former Transy student and an employee in the cafeteria for around 13 years, harped on the importance of funding opportunities such as scholarships or study abroad programs, rather than AI.
“My daughter went to this school. I know it’s not cheap,” she said. “There are scholarships, but not a lot. They can take that amount and give it to students to make a trip that they could never make without it. Or take an extra class here that they wouldn’t be able to afford. Sometimes just that little bump can make somebody’s world.”
Other staffers, including people who strongly agreed with the petition, said they were reluctant to sign because they feared pushback from the university. A few faculty also said they felt uncertain about whether they were “allowed” to sign and worried about professional consequences. Some had no hesitation and were excited to see students taking action on an issue they are equally concerned about.
“I had no qualms or concerns with signing,” said Spanish professor Jeremy Paden. “I think that there is no place for generative AI in elementary, secondary, or undergraduate education. I think it cheats students from acquiring and developing the hard-won skills and knowledge that will make them better thinkers and better communicators. In fact, it cheats them of developing the very skills and knowledge they need in order to be competent users of generative AI. And I think there is a fundamental confusion that proponents of it have between words and knowledge, and there is a dangerous anthropomorphism when we ascribe agency, knowledge, intellect, and will to a soulless algorithm.”
Paden acknowledged that some colleagues think otherwise, and may use or encourage the use of AI in their classrooms. Part of being in a community, he said, is learning to work with others despite deeply divergent opinions.
“Writing helps us hone our thought and helps us come into a better understanding of what we think,” Paden said. “Generative AI takes this away from us by not letting us develop the skills of deep reading, of writing, and revision. That is why I signed it.”
For some petition organizers, concerns about AI products like ChatGPT go well beyond the current contracts. They point to what they see as a broader administrative push to further integrate AI into education, a prospect that deeply unnerves many students.
“Artificial intelligence is the last thing a liberal arts school should endorse,” Schultz said. “It undermines the learning process, emphasizing an end product over actual improvement and personal development. AI is antithetical to what this institution should stand for.”
The petition organizers plan to submit their permission to President Brien Lewis in the last week before finals. The president has not replied to a request for comment as of press time; The Rambler will update this story if he responds.
Organizers say they are well aware that the university may not respond to their petition no matter how many signatures they get. But they say it’s an important signal no matter what happens next.
“Transylvania signed these contracts without our consent,” Schultz said. “We’re communicating how we feel, and if the university chooses to ignore us, then that’s that.”
Ramsey said that the potential for the university to refuse the petitioners’ request was something the group was prepared for from the beginning. “Certainly we hope that if the students collect enough signatures, the university will listen,” he said. “But ultimately, the choice is theirs. It’s also possible that there was a donor who specified this use of the funds; there’s a lot we simply don’t know. Even in that case, that’s a choice—the donor could choose to listen to the students and redirect those funds. The students are taking the only action they can, via a well-organized and peaceful expression of speech.”
For Ramsey, the conversations happening because of the petition drive are valuable in their own right. “People are talking about this issue instead of sweeping it under the rug,” he said. “When we started Hi!, opponents of AI on this campus felt like they had no voice, and that no one was listening to their concerns. Now I’m hearing the dialogue happen as part of this petition drive.”
Beatty echoed the community-building value of the petition drive, as well as the recent Hi!DIY events, which have focused on teaching and learning “do it yourself” skills in relaxed, social environments. The first event focused on crafts, such as embroidery; the second, “Hi!DIY 2: Human Words,” held last week, featured poetry readings and Chinese calligraphy.
“Organizing events for Hi! is such a joy for me,” Beatty said. “Personally, I’m really discouraged, angered even, by how much AI I see in the world around me. But when students, faculty, and staff drop what they’re doing in the middle of a day of classes to come make crafts, read poetry, and connect with other humans, I feel re-energized. I feel like we’re doing something important and worthwhile.”
