Faculty and administrators convened in Mills Hall last Friday for their first meeting of the year to discuss, among other topics, national news affecting the College and student use of artificial intelligence (AI).

In her report to the faculty near the start of the meeting, President Safa Zaki discussed the College’s response to the class action lawsuit that was filed over the summer. The lawsuit alleged that Bowdoin is one of 32 schools that have violated antitrust laws by using their early decision admissions programs to raise the cost of tuition.

“We do not believe the lawsuit has merit, and we are working with outside counsel to vigorously defend the College’s admission practices,” Zaki said. “I will also note that the court process for a case like this is lengthy. We expect that it will be several months and potentially longer before we learn whether a judge will allow the plaintiff’s case to proceed.”

Zaki also spoke about how the College is working to help international students in light of the Trump administration’s increased travel restrictions on student visa holders and other foreign nationals.

“I’m happy to report that our incoming international students were able to make it to campus,” Zaki said. “If and when we become aware of visa complications for our students—and I can’t speak to the details of individual students because of student privacy issues—you should know that our student affairs team is in touch with those students and provides them with resources on a case-by-case basis.”

Zaki then commented on the news that due to the College’s smaller student population, it is exempt from the federal endowment tax increase passed in July, affecting many wealthy universities and colleges.

“We are very happy to see an exemption in the endowment tax legislation for colleges and universities who enroll fewer than 3,000 tuition-paying students,” she said. “At the end of the last academic year, in anticipation of the large increase in the tax,… I had put together a committee that would help us weigh priorities and decide what to protect in a budget-cutting environment. I’m now very happy to report that we do not need to make those cuts, and so the committee will serve as a pilot for a college-wide budget committee that we might consider in the future.”

Later in the meeting, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Michael Cato spoke and answered questions about Bowdoin’s new use of LibreChat, an AI interface through which Bowdoin students, staff and faculty can access the premium models of multiple generative AI companies.

“[With LibreChat], I can write the same prompt and try it across different models and see how they perform differently,” Cato said. “But my favorite [aspect of the platform] is that I can work with a series of prompts, get happy with the results and turn to a different model and ask it to refine it.”

After Cato spoke, Dale Syphers, physics professor and chair of the Committee on Teaching and Classroom Practice (CoTCP), said the committee is currently working to provide faculty with more guidance on how to address student use of AI in their courses.

“About 40 percent of the students who are here probably used AI in high school and probably haven’t been in a course that has used it at Bowdoin, and meanwhile it’s getting integrated into all kinds of things,” Syphers said. “So a question the CoTCP is looking at is … what is the right policy in our own courses?”

Eric Chown, professor of Digital and Computational Studies and director of the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity Advisory Committee, added to Syphers’ comments, saying that faculty should make the AI policies in their syllabi as specific as possible.

“I just want to speak up for my library colleagues who asked that people please have clear AI policies,” Chown said. “If your policy is don’t use AI, that is the most important time to have a clear AI policy.”