Kimberly Von Randow ‘28
Opinions Editor
Is using AI cheating? At Holy Cross, the answer increasingly seems to depend on who is asking.
On one hand, the College has made a clear institutional statement: artificial intelligence matters. Students are advised to complete an AI literacy course to be granted access to SuarezAI, a school-sponsored platform that offers multiple advanced AI models in a closed, privacy-conscious environment. We are encouraged to explore, compare outputs, and develop critical thinking skills. AI, we are told, is inevitable, powerful, and worth understanding.
On the other hand, many students walk into their classrooms and encounter a very different message: do not use AI. Or do not use it unless explicitly permitted by your professor. Or unless you are prepared to explain yourself later. The more AI use and learning is encouraged, the more minefields we have to prepare to dodge as students. This is not an argument against AI in education. It is an argument against being told, at the same time, to learn a tool and to fear it.
My first article of the year last semester touched on a topic similar to this, and at risk of sounding like a broken record, I will once again give my opinion on the fickle relationship between schoolwork and AI. And how the line between cheating and utilizing your resources continues to get blurrier.
The introduction of SuarezAI creates a paradox of permission. Institutionally, AI is endorsed and promoted as essential for modern learning and living. Academically, it is often prohibited or quietly policed through academic integrity warnings. Students seem to be expected to become AI-literate in theory while remaining AI-invisible in practice. The implicit lesson is not “use responsibly,” but rather, “use carefully—and hope it is never noticed.” Providing thousands of college students with a super advanced AI and hoping none of them use it dishonestly is a noble assumption, one I would not make myself. And when it is said that user inputs “…may be accessed (when permitted by College authorities) in a limited number of situations, including academic integrity investigations.” It makes me wonder whether students are being invited to learn with AI, or just to use it under conditions where trust is provisional.
However, I won’t be a hypocrite and not admit that I can certainly see where SuarezAI can be applicable. Having a 24/7 tutor for my physiology class does sound like a good deal, and when it comes to courses that rely on hard facts and memorization, it is much harder to assume students are being academically dishonest. But in most English courses, for example, the mere suspicion of AI will have you treated as if you spat on the grave of William Shakespeare himself. Expectations shift dramatically depending on the class, leaving students guessing what counts as “use,” “assistance,” or misconduct, and making professors work harder to double down on their syllabi and further define what cheating means for them.
SuarezAI has the potential to be a genuinely valuable educational tool, but we know better than anyone that tools alone do not shape learning environments — policies, expectations, and trust do. The question, then, is not under which context is using AI cheating. It is whether we are prepared to define learning in a way that reflects the new tools students are being asked to understand. Until those definitions align, students will continue to navigate mixed messages mostly on their own, learning less about discernment and more about avoidance. And that may be the most unintended lesson of all.
Featured image courtesy of The Information
Copy edited by Charlotte Collins ’26
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