Student senator Cristina Gregory is working with Scott Cann, associate vice president for systems and services in Boston College Information Technology Services (ITS), to find a tool to detect generative AI tools like ChatGPT in assignments, she said at the UGBC Senate meeting Tuesday night.
“I’m working with Scott and two other professors on researching one standard tool that we can come up with and say, ‘Professors, this is what you would use if you’re going to use something,’” said Gregory, MCAS ’26.
Gregory recapped a spring break meeting with the Campus AI Steering Committee, a faculty-led group that discusses AI usage in teaching and learning.
“I brought up the concern regarding professors using AI to test if students were using AI, and I asked if there could be more standardization or transparency, if we could use one resource to check so students know,” Gregory said.
If a standardized AI tool is adopted, professors will clearly communicate their AI policies with students, according to Gregory.
“Then, putting out a statement or some guidelines from professors, hopefully discouraging that a little bit, but trying to find a balance between using resources to make sure students are doing their own work, but also being fair,” Gregory said.
Earlier in the meeting, Maaz Shaikh, student senator and Messina ’26, shared that Muslim students on Messina campus will now have access to on-campus meals for Suhoor, the pre-dawn meal consumed before fasting during Ramadan.
“Students can grab their meals from the freezers in the dining hall for the weekdays, and then for the weekends, they can sign up on a sheet and do the same thing,” Shaikh said.
During Ramadan, BC offers specialized meals for Suhoor. On weekdays, meals are offered in Green2Go containers in the dining halls on both campuses.
On the weekends, students can pick up non-BC Dining food in the third-floor lounge of Voute Hall in the early morning, but it is difficult for Messina students to access this food because of transportation constraints, Shaikh said.
“I was trying to get that at Messina, but it wasn’t going to happen,” Shaikh said. “They told us to use the Eagle Escort at 4 a.m. to come in and grab it. No one really wants to come here at 4 a.m., so I wasn’t able to get that done.”
Katie McCafferey, student senator and MCAS ’25, shared updates about an online study abroad module UGBC is developing with the Office of Global Education (OGE), which students will complete before applying and will include a video highlighting the benefits of the experience.
“I’m meeting with [OGE] on Friday to build a video about leveraging your abroad experience for interviews, adding it to resumes, and using it for grad school and such,” said McCaffery.
Cece Mase, transfer student representative and MCAS ’26, talked about her previous experience navigating Clemson University’s student app in preparation for a discussion with ITS about developing a centralized Agora Portal mobile application.
“At Clemson, one of the easiest things for me was there was one singular app that we downloaded when we went to orientation,” Mase said. “There’s a homepage with two long rows of every single resource you need on campus. It’s in one central hub.”
Using Clemson’s app as a model, Mase hopes ITS will be able to create an app that consolidates all BC services and information.
“With an outline and having mine still activated, we’re going into it knowing that there’s another big university that’s doing this,” Mase said. “That makes this so much easier.”
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