City College’s Academic Senate met last Wednesday, Oct. 22 where they further discussed concerns surrounding academic integrity and proctoring record access in the wake of AI.
The meeting began with a public comment by Assistant Superintendent-Vice President of Business Services Chris Renbarger. He thanked the Planning and Resources Committee (PNR) for their uptake on the discussion of a coming room lease to Antioch University.
Regarding the Bookstore Advisory Committee, Renbarger explained that he and other colleagues from Student Services and Support and Academic Senate President Joshua Ramirez had a meeting discussing the future of the bookstore.
Drawing from these discussions, Renbarger put forward a multifaceted proposal to establish a monthly meeting to address the use of the bookstore. The creation of a forum is to discuss its broader strategic vision, understand how the bookstore can best serve the City College community and use these insights to inform future contract negotiations with Follett.
PNR Chair Jamie Campbell, following Renbarger’s comment said the recommendation to extend the lease of the Business-Communications Center Room 313 would be to Antioch University.
After discussions with Renbarger along with an accounting representative, Campbell said the PNR committee has determined that adding BC 313 to Antioch’s lease would have minimal to zero impact on teaching at this campus.
BC Room 313 has belonged to the Computer Information Technologies (CIT) department which has mostly moved online and contains electronic equipment that could be reused elsewhere on campus.
Campbell said the recommendation to include the room in Antioch’s lease was unanimous among the PNR committee.
“They had revamped this room to specifically be sort of like a teaching lab,” Campbell said. “It just costs a lot to revamp it, but it has not been used.”
Ramirez took the floor following public comment. He discussed updating academic integrity policies to incorporate AI-related issues and concerns.
These new policies would include procedures for handling complaints about student misuse of AI, addressing academic violations related to AI and establishing guidelines for how such cases could be handled at the dean level when AI misuse is alleged.
The proposed policies would also address questions surrounding how AI misuse would be handled and how a student suspected of academic misconduct could have their grades affected during an ongoing investigation.
Challenges with proctoring records and privacy issues were also touched on, continuing a discussion from a previous Academic Senate meeting.
Ramirez expressed the importance of finalizing AI-misuse procedures for the sake of the faculty at City College.
“We can’t leave our instructors just hanging on this and trying to manufacture a grade,” Ramirez said.
The goal is to have a formalized discussion on the topic by Nov. 12.
Ramirez then followed up on a Consultation Council meeting, which convened with Financial Aid and Academic Senate leadership, along with the executive cabinet to discuss scheduling concerns.
Ramirez raised concerns surrounding a debate about an alleged quota forcing social sciences and humanities departments to move 50% of classes to in-person modules without senate consultation. Ramirez emphasized that they are unclear if it is more of a goal or an aspiration as opposed to a mandate.
Ramirez expressed that nothing is certain about these modality concerns.
“There are still lingering concerns that the schedules were put together under duress, that the restrictions have not yet been reversed,” Ramirez said. “And so that leads us to wonder, is it a mandate or isn’t it?”
The next Academic Senate meeting will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 12.
