Trinity’s Crisis of Conviction

Talia Cutler ’27

Executive Opinion Editor

Being an Opinion Editor has its fair share of difficulties. There are weeks when editing is heavy and proofreading is a chore. It is inherently vulnerable to put your thoughts and perspectives in the student newspaper for public consumption week after week. However, perhaps there has been no greater scourge than the rise of student use of AI in opinion writing. Over the past two semesters, I have encountered several articles that were written entirely by ChatGPT. It is not subtle — you can tell an article’s inauthenticity by reading it. They had the telltale signs of AI, with odd buzzwords that no student would use, bland tone and poorly used em dashes, amongst other things. I am truly baffled. Writing an opinion article is entirely optional. No one is forcing anyone to open a Google Doc, watching from the shadows, billy club in hand. Thus, the use of AI is not only unnecessary but troubling. I am afraid that this practice in the opinion section is indicative of a failing belief system on Trinity’s campus. 

Upon going down the rabbit hole of Tripod archives, I found so many editions from years past when the Opinion section was nearly 5 pages long and absolutely brimming with strong student voices. Trinity had perspectives on national, global and campus issues. People agreed and disagreed with one another, writing letters to the editors about previous articles — correcting, congratulating or cajoling the author. There was active engagement with the paper, a dialogue occurring in its pages. People read, thought about what they had read, formed a stance and cared enough to share it. 

Now, instead of conjuring up some lukewarm take for the Tripod, students are turning to AI to do it for them — or rather, think for them. It’s shameful and embarrassing. AI has no place in the Opinion section because AI inherently has no opinions. But clearly, neither do our students. It has reached the point where I struggle to fill a two page spread with quality articles. The box at the bottom of the section calling for student submissions grows larger and larger, swallowing up the page. There is some irony there, no?

What underlying symptom is this? What parasite has infested our student body? There is a crisis of intelligence and conviction occurring on our campus. To have an opinion is to believe in something, and belief systems are truly the soul of any academic community. It gives life to intellectual bodies. Trinity’s belief systems are failing, growing bland and artificial. No one believes in anything strongly enough to express it themselves. This apathy permeates Trinity College, manifesting itself in feeble AI articles sent to my inbox. Yet, I am left to question, is this laziness caused by the convenience of ChatGPT? Or is ChatGPT a symptom of an increasing level of laziness? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

I may never know the answer to this. However, I can see the two working in tandem, slowly aiming for neutrality and sluggish indifference. In June of 2024 (over a year and a half after Chat was released to the public), Tech News ran an article entitled “ChatGPT May Lead To The Downfall Of Education And Critical Thinking.” This conclusion from the industry is horrifyingly slow-moving — I argue that it already has, and the evidence is exemplified in our newspaper, as well as our campus community. 

A central mission of a Trinity education (or any liberal arts education for that matter) is self-sufficiency. Writer David Foster Wallace once said that “the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a [liberal arts school] isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” As students consciously elect to have AI think and believe for them (especially in an entirely optional setting like the Tripod), I am left to question how education can even function alongside tools like ChatGPT. Trinity used to matriculate immeasurably successful figures in opinion writing and commentary, like George Will, Jesse Waters and even Tucker Carlson. Not anymore. What I see on campus is a desert of credo, aided and abetted by AI. My plea is one of confusion and desperation: Trinity students, what do you believe in?