This story is part of “Concept to Creation: The Ithacan’s 2026 Arts Insert,” which can be found in the April 2 print edition. All of the stories in the insert can be found online here.
Priya Sirohi’s henna cone was refusing to cooperate. Her swirling designs were flawed, and the results were unique and unexpected. For Sirohi, an assistant professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College, that was partially the point.
“Nothing quite turned out the way I wanted it to,” Sirohi said. “But maybe there’s a beauty in that, right? There’s something about making art and making it imperfectly and with messiness … that is really very human.”
Messy humanity was on full display Feb. 19, as tables in the Campus Center lobby filled with tissue paper, coloring pages and henna cones. Passersby stopped to participate in a gathering, part protest, part educational workshop and part block party. It was the first meeting of IC-GPT, a new club on campus using art and interpersonal interaction to oppose the use of generative artificial intelligence in the classroom. The name, short for Ithaca College Get People Together, serves as a playful reference to the AI chatbot ChatGPT, and to the creative community student organizers hope to build.
IC-GPT began as a thought exercise. Sirohi teaches a senior writing seminar about generative AI’s effects on the writing industry, which often explores how language in higher education around AI conveys the school’s intentions. Sirohi invited students to consider the marketing of AI @ IC A Day Of Learning, a school-sponsored summit exploring the integration of generative AI in an educational setting. What if, instead of hosting “AI @ IC,” the college hosted “Humans @ IC”? How would shifting one word shift the way the institution communicates its priorities?
Sirohi’s students took the idea and ran. In only a week, the makeshift club organized Humans @ IC, a direct rebuttal to the college’s summit taking place the same day. What IC-GPT lacked in college funding and time to plan, they made up for in participatory spirit and frantic enthusiasm. Senior Lewis Petterson, the president of the club, said Humans @ IC’s unexpected success serves as a testament to their collective passion.
“It’s not as tedious and hard and overbearing of a process as people make it out to be in order to push their AI agenda,” Peterson said. “Literally anything’s possible to do by yourself, if you have help from someone else, or if you just have determination. You don’t need AI.”
Sirohi said around 200 community members attended Humans @ IC, while Jenna Linskens, director of the Center for Instructional Design and Educational Technology, estimated that over 125 participants attended AI @ IC. Senior Gregory Andrew, IC-GPT’s social media manager, posted a video to the club’s Instagram standing outside Emerson Suites, where AI @ IC took place. Gesturing to rows of empty tables, Andrew lip-synced to an audio asking, “where are all the hot people?” “they’re at Humans @ IC,” the caption answered.
As the club’s meme-filled digital footprint may suggest, most of IC-GPT’s organizers are far from Luddites. Many of them are careful to specify that they are not categorically opposed to any form of artificial intelligence. Instead, they are concerned about generative AI’s impact on creative expression and higher education. Senior Ian Hawks, a founding member of the club, said any attempt to incorporate AI into a creative writing curriculum thoroughly misunderstands the art form’s essence.
“I think the beauty of it is that you know any piece of writing is coming from a place of emotion in another human being,” Hawks said. “Artificial intelligence just strips all of that away.”
Hawks said generative AI allows individuals to bypass the hardest but most fruitful stages of the writing process.
“Failure is what sets up your ability to think critically and be able to really strengthen your craft,” Hawks said. “And AI is just a crutch where you skip all of that. … It cheats you out of a lot of skills.”
IC-GPT is less interested in students who use generative AI and more in investigating the failings of an educational system that would normalize such a choice. Petterson said he has observed that fewer individuals support generative AI on campus than people think, a misunderstanding that frays the trust between students and faculty.
“When a student sees a professor use generative AI to give them an assignment, that student’s disappointed in their professor, and now they don’t take that assignment seriously,” Petterson said. “When a professor sees a student use generative AI to write an essay, they’re disappointed in that student and don’t take that student seriously.”
Senior Robyn Jensen-Tode, a member of IC-GPT’s executive board, said one of her professors was shocked to learn his students were not using AI. She said that Humans @ IC helped to clarify students’ and faculty’s true opinions on the technology.
“One of the major purposes of IC-GPT is to set the record straight, to provide a voice for a very popular position,” Jensen-Tode said.
IC-GPT is partnering with the Student Governance Council’s AI ad-hoc committee centering student opinion. Both groups hope to foster dialogue and uplift student voices.
Ali Erkan, associate professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science, volunteered to speak at Humans @ IC. He said he is frequently disappointed with the quality of healthy debate around AI at IC.
“I’ve been disheartened by a lack of a robust discussion about AI on campus,” Erkan said. “We are using this tool without fully understanding the ramifications of it on learning. It’s unlike any other technology we’ve ever seen. This is different.”
Erkan is painfully aware of the power dynamics surrounding AI on campus. Administrators and faculty making decisions about the technology do not jeopardize their own learning, Erkan said; they are already “past their formative years.” Erkan said the school should be more proactive in examining AI’s impact.
“I don’t think we should be afraid of discussions, conversations, quarrels, arguments, fights,” Erkan said. “I always wonder, if we can’t discuss difficult things on an academic campus, where and when can we discuss them? In business? At home?”
Claire Gleitman, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, said via email she appreciated the work of IC-GPT to encourage dialogue about generative AI.
“Creating spaces for the vigorous and open exchange of ideas is at the very heart of what we do as a college campus,” Gleitman said.
Walking by Gleitman’s office, Sirohi said she often sees a flood of demoralized H&S faculty dropping in to seek guidance, raise concerns and even cry. Gleitman said that, while the extent of technological integration varies from class to class, each professor in H&S is considering the effects of AI thoughtfully.
“Faculty members in H&S are grappling with this new technology with seriousness and care,” Gleitman said. “The faculty are engaged in important and probing debates about the implications of this new technology, for their areas of study and for the future of humankind.”
In the past few years, IC has hosted a series of AI initiatives that embrace the application of the technology in education. The Center for Instructional Design and Educational Technologies at IC is partnering with the Center for Faculty Excellence to offer mini-grants for professors who teach AI literacy. Sirohi received an AI mini-grant to teach her senior writing seminar. Still, she said such initiatives tend to normalize the use of generative AI and suggest the technology is the only possible path forward.
Hawks said that the administration’s aggressive promotion of AI can feel suffocating. Even information on IC’s website felt dismissive, he said, offering questions and answers focused mainly on the benefits of generative AI. Hawks said IC-GPT showcased alternatives to an AI-centric future.
“A lot of the strategy is to make it seem like, ‘This is happening. Why would you ever want to say no?’” Hawks said. “A lot of people feel that they cannot fight back against [AI].”
The main table at Humans @ IC had a suggestion box, a rant box and fliers promoting resources like Counseling and Psychological Services and the Writing Center, where Sirohi is the director. Hawks drafted a series of email templates students could use to inform instructors they were uncomfortable using AI for an assignment. Hawks said that many students may feel nervous about saying “no” to an authority figure.
“There’s a stigma in academics that we as students are required to listen to professors, and the professor’s word is law,” Hawks said. “It can be very scary, especially with how big generative AI seems to be becoming, to go to a professor and say, ‘I don’t want to do this.’”
Hawks used the skills he learned from four years of writing classes to help students struggling with this dilemma — writing succinct, clear and nuanced sample messages. He drafted multiple templates, varying based on the context of the situation, all seeped in his experiences at IC.
Such work is fundamental to IC-GPT and to IC’s Department of Writing. The program’s statement of values encourages students “to imagine, through writing, solutions to the complex personal, political, and environmental issues we face in our global society.” From Petterson’s carefully crafted mission statement to Andrew’s witty Instagram posts, strong writing seems central to IC-GPT.
Eleanor Henderson, a professor of writing, brought her entire Introduction to Creative Writing class to Humans @ IC, filling each table with lively discussion and collaboration. Henderson said that Introduction to Creative Writing often attracts students stuck in demanding majors seeking to think creatively. Humans @ IC allowed her students to unplug and connect. Instead of trying to teach about AI with information coming from the top down, Henderson said Humans @ IC encouraged learning that was organic and participatory. A group of “sporty guys” crafted ornate pipe-cleaner flowers. Other students collaged or colored. Many participated in “Human-GPT,” an activity where attendees wrote a topic on their nametag that they felt they had encyclopedic knowledge of. The game was a massive hit, with participants asking strangers questions they might otherwise ask a chatbot — from queries about the history of Mormonism to the TV show “Riverdale.” Henderson said seeing students “geeking out” about their passions brought her optimism.
“I think the mission of a college that has a liberal arts core [is] to encourage students and really empower them to lean into their own natural instincts as thinkers and artists,” Henderson said. “In terms of my students’ use of AI, in part because of this event, I’m feeling more hope than ever that students have a healthy degree of skepticism and that it has rallied them around this common cause.”
The event empowered Petterson to submit the club’s application for official recognition from the college and begin planning their future events. Moving forward, Petterson said he anticipates collaborations with other organizations that combine art and community, like IC Paint and Sip and Open Mic. Sirohi said that IC-GPT emphasizes the ways that human-made art can be simultaneously introspective and interpersonal.
“When we create in community, that’s kind of the point,” Sirohi said. “You make art to connect with yourself and others and the world. It’s a fundamentally human thing to do, and when you make it part of a tool or technology, you’ve made it transactional. You’ve made it a commodity.”
Hawks said Humans @ IC’s success reminded him of the power of student voices to make change.
“It felt very inspiring just to know that social change is possible, and it’s possible through speaking out, through holding events, through getting like–minded people together,” Hawks said. “The way to fight [generative AI] is to keep talking about it in whatever way possible. Keep poking that bear, keep sending messages.”
