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[1] In the critical months leading up to his college search. - "He's a really bright student, honors classes, AP classes."
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[2] One high school student outside of Boston was slapped with a major punishment for using AI to help with research on an AP⁽¹⁾ U.S. History project, according to a lawsuit filed by his parents.
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[3] It's not like he went in and said, "Here, write my paper." They were getting notes and doing an outline.
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[4] His mother is an author herself, and his father is a math teacher. The student received a D on the overall assignment, got detention, and was initially prevented from joining the National Honor Society.
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[5] According to the suit, "imagine a young man with his whole life ahead of him, very good student, perfect score on his ACT⁽²⁾."
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[6] "And you're sitting there finishing your applications, and you have to decide whether to click yes or no when the question is: 'Have you been disciplined?' Right now, to be forthright on that application, he would have to say yes.
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[7] That student had set his sights on top-tier schools like Stanford. - "Was your client told at all before that that he could not use AI?"
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[8] "The defendants say that because this particular student received a fairly generic slide deck of PowerPoint slides in his English class, that somehow put him on notice that he'd be subject to this significant and serious academic consequence. That's not sufficient. That's not a policy."
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[9] The suit says the school's handbook had no AI policy at the time. - "His punishment for the situation has been extreme and ongoing, and it is now interfering with his applications to colleges."
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[10] Hingham Public Schools told NBC Boston: "To respect the privacy of the student involved and due to ongoing litigation, HPS is unable to provide further details at this time."
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[11] The stakes of the suit, and that senior's future, are potentially precedent-setting. It's one of the first of its kind to challenge school discipline over the academic use of AI.
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[12] "Clear is kind. When it comes to AI, it's evolving so rapidly that the clearer a school can be with their expectations, the better." - Experts say teachers can help by discussing those expectations early and frequently.
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[13] "They might do that at the beginning of a class or the beginning of an assignment, but they're finding that the more they can set those expectations, the better it is for everyone, both the school and the student."
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[14] For now, though, the student's mom is just trying to clear her son's name. - "He's a smart kid, he's got good character, and this was one mistake. It wasn't even a rule in the handbook that he broke, it was somebody's opinion on what should be used."
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[15] Steven Romo joins us now in studio. So, Steven, I guess a big question is, will this incident hurt him from going to the school of his choice?
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[16] It sounds like, according to his parents and the suit, he's got a good resume, he's done a lot, but is this going to hold him back?
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[17] "Yeah, those ACT scores, varsity ball player, all those things really working in his favor. That's the big fear, though. That's why I think this lawsuit was filed to begin with."
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[18] "He really wants to get into Stanford. Those deadlines for those applications are coming up in just a couple of weeks now. It's not clear exactly how that will pan out."
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[19] "But we do know that some of those schools, including Stanford, are now looking at adding AI policies into their own procedures, so they can prevent this from happening in that situation as well. Tom"
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[20] "Alright, Steven Romo. I feel like we're always doing a lot of AI stories. They're getting more and more, right?"
