Leon Hu ’29
Exec. Opinion Editor
In a statement published Sept. 22, Stanford admitted that it used AI to alter the race and appearance of students in a promotional image on campus. A Hispanic student was swapped out for a Black student, and the other two students in the original image — an Asian and a white student — were altered to be more ‘conventionally attractive’ (meaning skinnier). Despite being an ethical nightmare that validates the replacement of real people with artificial hallucinations, this self-induced crisis remains isolated to a single incident at a school 3000 miles away.
Yet every day since the beginning of the semester, Mather has proudly displayed “Welcome Back Bantams” images featuring an AI-generated image featuring a fake scene with fake students on a fake campus. The resulting image looks utterly foreign our campus, and, if anything, the backdrop looks closer to being taken at Princeton than in Hartford. Meanwhile, Trinity’s admissions staff recently ran a series of social media posts featuring AI-generated images of themselves and campus, flaunting overloaded, generic graphics and artificial renditions of the Chapel. And everywhere across campus, AI-formatted or generated posters can be found advertising clubs and college events.
Why are we so unwilling to promote Trinity with Trinity itself?
Trinity, like many institutions of higher education, has found itself in an identity crisis. Over the past few years, we have gradually shifted away from the liberal arts towards a stronger focus on business and professional development. Yet we still tote “well-rounded academics” (a quote pulled from the front page of Trinity’s website) as one of our biggest strengths while the Elting Center will be finished, roughly a decade after our college’s last new academic addition to campus. Our stance on AI is, in the eyes of many, tenuous, and we seem uncertain about how much to lean into technologies that threaten the traditional view of college as a mere imparter of information.
Additionally, we — like many other schools — overemphasize the importance of national rankings, boasting about our newest U.S. News and World Report ranking. When the Linkedin college rankings came out, we were also quick to promote it. But we are not at the top of any rankings list, and Trinity seems to be aware of it. Thus, when touting the success of recently-graduated classes or student research milestones on campus, it is always contextualized with schools that are at the top: Yale, Columbia, Hopkins, Brown — the list goes on. It is also no secret that while many of our NESCAC peers consistently rank at the top for liberal arts colleges in the country, we have never even gotten close. Consequently, when our administration consistently relies on our rankings for marketing, it always contains the implicit recognition that we are simply ‘not as good’ as our peers.
However, in many regards, we are as good — or better — than our higher-ranked peers. Multiple alumni, including one in this year, have won Pulitzers. Our STEM faculty have been cited thousands of times in peer-reviewed articles and regularly present at international conferences. We host elite music competitions, film festivals, and a historic international hip-hop festival. We have so much that makes us truly unique and defines the quality of our institution, yet instead, our administration chooses to rely on generic rankings, flashy but questionable buildings and AI-generated images of a campus that does not exist.
So, like much of academia, we remain stuck in an identity crisis. American colleges are threatened by a demographic cliff, and AI makes it impossible for universities to survive if the only thing they do is provide knowledge instead of developing crucial skills. Consequently, as parents increasingly question the investment of a college education, schools rely on generic marketing to make the choice to enroll more appealing. Having a high U.S. News and World Report ranking makes a price tag over $90,000 more justifiable. And using AI for promotional material makes it clear that our college is for, not against, the use of AI — the thing that pragmatists insist is necessary for higher education’s survival.
None of this solves the crisis. In the coming decades, elite schools will continue to become more selective, and more and more small institutions will be phased out. Many teens will choose to use AI instead of attending college, and, unfortunately, Trinity is currently poised to remain largely the same. But by committing further to the mission that made us who we are — a commitment to the liberal arts and sciences on a vibrant, human campus with boundless creativity — we can survive and even thrive. There is so much that makes Trinity unique. None of that, however, is found in a fake image generated of a generic college campus. Nor is it found in the prestige of other elite schools. What makes Trinity great will always be the real people and places that sit on this campus atop a hill.