Faculty Voted for an AI Policy but the University Didn't Answer
The university's faculty senate passed a motion in November 2025 demanding a comprehensive policy on generative AI. In a vote that included 3,638 faculty members, 2,666 voted yes, 429 voted no. SACUA Chair Derek Peterson stated that faculty are stuck playing detective on their own students' writing, with no tools and no guidance from the institution.
A few months before that, at an October 2025 Senate Assembly meeting, VP and CIO Ravi Pendse told faculty that generative AI would be the most impactful technology of the century, then floated a faculty advisory committee while also promising he'd never make anyone use AI in their classroom. Provost Laurie McCauley brought up a 2023 AI committee report and said it was probably time to look at it again. It is now June 2026 and there is still no timeline and no commitment.
SACUA was still going in circles by April 2026, this time over a proposal for AI-free zones on campus. It failed. One member made the point that students can't really consent to AI's impact on their education when literally nobody, including the companies selling these tools, knows what that impact will be.
Faculty senate motions don't carry any administrative weight, they are more so an avenue to gather faculty perception. And that perception has been souring for over a year while the university keeps signing AI deals and building out infrastructure on a completely different track. Faculty keep voting on what they'd like to see happen. The university keeps doing whatever it was already doing.