Mickey McCloud got out of his seat, walked to the podium, and opened a JCCC AI town hall meeting last semester by displaying the new JCCC AI guidance on the screen. 

“So, if you look at our overview, basically, our real position here is that we cannot fear AI,” said McCloud, executive vice president and provost at JCCC. 

As he then went through the new guidance point by point, it became clear that there was a difference between the faculty’s use and the students’ use. The work students create must be their own, according to the guidance, but there was no mention of this in the faculty guidance. For example, the guidance did not specify how professors can use AI to develop coursework, create tests, grade tests, grade assignments, or use AI in the classroom. 

That might be a problem at least for some students at JCCC. 

“I wouldn’t feel the most comfortable if a professor were to use AI to create assignments or to basically make their own presentations or lectures or work for the class,” said Jude Foster-Rojas, a student at JCCC. “If I’m taking a class, I expect the work to be done from the professor’s side as well.” 

Foster-Rojas also felt that the AI guidance, as it is currently written, is not fair. 

“I think there’s a more targeted demographic that it points to, and while I understand that is needed,” Foster-Rojas said. “I think it isn’t fair to the students, and professors aren’t being held to those same ethical standards as students.” 

And Foster-Rojas wants fair guidance across the JCCC campus and equal use of AI between professors and students. 

“If I’m taking a class, I expect a professor to be putting in their genuine, honest work, and if they’re going to be utilizing AI, I expect them to at least disclose that,” Foster-Rojas said.  

And this is where the concept of fairness becomes problematic because there’s a difference between fair and equal.  

“Students are not on equal footing with their professors, and they shouldn’t be. There are completely different standards by which a professor is judged on their work, and a student who is attempting to gain acknowledgment for being assessed for having to, for having the skill set to do certain work,” McCloud said.  

However, professors are known as working professional scholars; they should be bound by the ethics of their respective disciplines. They should cite work they take from other sources.  

“It’s an open and interesting question as to whether an individual who uses AI to aggregate their syllabi from the last 20 years into a new syllabus. Versus a student who is attempting to obtain assessment and grading of their skill set,” McCloud said. “I think those are two very different standards, and they have to be recognized as two very different standards. But I also do think that if an instructor is using AI to create, rather than using their own intellectual aptitude to do so, then that standard should be the same.” 

According to the chair of the AI task force, R.W. Singh, some professors may not be on board with disclosing whether they are using AI to generate work in the classroom. 

“Some teachers do not want to be transparent about whether they are generating things with AI,” Singh said. 

Some professors fear disclosing how they use AI because, if they do, they’ll have to disclose how they do everything in the classroom, according to Singh. 

“The professors said if we do that, do we have to be transparent about everything we do in the classroom, sort of thing? Including cheating mitigation strategies and stuff like that,” Singh said. 

The Student Code of Conduct Policy 319.01 states that unauthorized use of generative artificial intelligence is an example of an academic integrity violation. Plus, a faculty member may further define violations of academic integrity, cheating, or plagiarism in the course syllabus. 

The AI task force was established in fall 2025, and its work is not yet complete. According to Singh, the task force still has more to work on and discuss. The AI guidance for the college is not a finished policy. The AI task force will be running meetings for fall 2026. 

“There’s no limit at the moment because it still needs to be discussed, and there are plenty of different aspects to talk about over time. Whether it is the data privacy or the policy on getting new tools approved is another thing,” Singh said. “And then also teacher use and student use.”