In the first-ever case of its kind, a third-year student faces disciplinary probation for an AI-generated suicide note. While not submitted as coursework for a class, a student (whom we will refer to as “Kyle” for anonymity purposes) typed up his goodbye letter and sent it to Counseling and Psychological Services, hoping to get some help. As per protocol, however, CAPS ran it through their AI checker, which automatically flagged one too many em dashes and “it is not just…, it is…” sentence structures, producing a paper marked as 97.75% GPT-written. Kyle was promptly sent to appear before the honor committee to defend his case.
The full letter, which will not be released for public consumption, also featured a note about potential edits from the large language model that the user seemingly forgot to delete.
If you want, next I can:
- tighten this to be more accusatory/more traumatizing
- write a version for someone you really liked, to ensure they are haunted forever
- make your note more playful
Kyle was brought before a council of the Office of Community Standards on Friday, where they quickly concluded his guilt, releasing a Majority Decision commenting on their disappointment in the “declining Gen-Z work ethic” and how “there is probably nothing in the world more embarrassing than cheating on a suicide note.” The council sentenced Kyle to a quarter of weekly meetings with a representative of the Academic Integrity Working Group to discuss the repercussions of AI use in written work.
When asked to comment on this punishment, Kyle told us at Flipside, “Shouldn’t I be talking to a therapist?”
Because this letter was purely for private use, Kyle will not face suspension, but will be required to rewrite his note by hand into a bluebook exam with a proctor to prove the new writing is definitely his own work.
It will be a long road ahead of Kyle to clear his name to his peers, advisors, and instructors. No one said it better than him in his statement on his personal social media: “If I wasn’t going to kill myself then, I definitely am now.”
