At the University of South Carolina, an informal vote conducted during the school’s AI Day ran nine to one against its OpenAI partnership among the students who stopped to participate. A national Gallup survey also found Gen Z becoming less excited and more angry about AI, even while regular use remained steady. The Conference on College Composition and Communication has now formally affirmed students' and instructors' right to refuse generative AI in writing classrooms.
A reasonable approach may be to require AI literacy without requiring AI adoption.
Students shouldn’t have to create accounts, surrender personal data, or upload their creative work. Instead, an instructor can provide AI-generated material for the entire class to examine. Students can identify what it got right, what it missed, and whether to keep, limit, rework, or reject the output.
They don’t have to like AI or use it. They do need to understand what it can do, where it fails, and how it may affect the profession they’re preparing to enter.
Sources: Gallup, CCCC resolution, reporting on student resistance