The Brief

Older and wiser from one academic year with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, faculty at community colleges have recognized that their students are no strangers to generative artificial intelligence tools.

With a new academic year beginning, faculty fall somewhere between two sentiments — optimism on what generative AI can do for students, and serious concern about what damage it can cause.

Across the country, education guidance for generative AI has in some cases been unclear and in other cases too didactic — outright bans of its use.

In the absence of official guidance, this leaves faculty members to figure this out on their own. Faculty leading these discussions share one thing in common: They want to make sure students are learning.

And so at the start of the fall semester, in an auditorium at Pasadena City College, a talkative group of just over 30 faculty and staff gathered to talk about the inevitable new presence in their classrooms and offices.

You can feel that the room is ready to engage. Even before the session kicks off, instructors swap stories about how new technology enters the classroom. One laughs about whether to borrow a playbook from another professor and ban all electronics in the classroom.

Writing center faculty Giselle Miralles and Genesis Montalvo address the crowd.

“We just want to do a really quick reflection on this AI tsunami that we have suddenly experienced, as we have heard more and more about AI and its use in the classroom,” Montalvo says, kicking off the training with a partner exercise.

“Where are you now? Are you still in the same place that you were when you first learned about ChatGPT and other AI? Or have you changed directions, changed your viewpoint?”

Not a replacement for learning 

Miralles and Montalvo tell LAist their own thinking has developed over time. The English instructors learned about ChatGPT last year through TikTok. They say faculty feared their jobs could be replaced, and many had planned to prevent or catch students using the generative AI for assignments.

“It became this really negative conversation. And that kind of brought into question, well, I don't want my job to be just policing students. Like, ‘ha, gotcha,’” Montalvo says. “What we want to do with this presentation is let professors know that this is here to stay. And rather than treating it as an enemy, how can we treat it as a learning tool?”

Giselle Miralles

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Veronica Lechuga

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Genesis Montalvo

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Veronica Lechuga

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Montalvo and Miralles personally have both found ChatGPT useful. Montalvo has used ChatGPT for starting the simple mundane task of summarizing author biographies before adding her own take on the assignment. She says she’s not out to stop students from becoming digitally savvy, knowing friends in the legal and medical fields who have used the AI for their professions.

For Miralles, ChatGPT can reach students in a way that she might not. She reached that conclusion when she asked ChatGPT to explain how a camera exposure works, in simple terms, hoping it could do better than her husband. (This took a few tries.) For students, Miralles reasons, that would be like having someone who could explain concepts when faculty are not available — on the weekends, 24/7.

Full of tradeoffs

Over the course of the training, faculty explore all kinds of questions and comments.

One offers at the outset that he finds ChatGPT is very good at writing code. Another says she could see that the AI could enhance accommodations to students. One notes that ChatGPT could give students instant feedback on their work. A counselor shares that generative AI can help first-generation students construct resumés and write cover letters. Another attendee complains that ChatGPT is "usually giving me C-level work."

Genesis Montalvo presenting at a faculty presentation about AI at Pasadena City College.

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Veronica Lechuga

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There are thornier issues, too. If ChatGPT learns through material it can access, well, there’s a lot of prejudiced and otherwise bad material out there, so does that mean ChatGPT might be replicating those issues? Another participant says he’s seen on the news that ChatGPT might cite sources that don’t actually exist.

And as much as instructors may recognize the benefits of AI, they still express concern about students completing assignments without contributing their own work.

Set a starting point

Montalvo supports students using ChatGPT as a starting point for their assignments, a brainstorming tool. Nonetheless, she expects that students revise the output for accuracy and to reflect their own voices.

“If you're using AI to just completely generate without you, yourself, engaging with it, you are hurting yourself in the long run because you're taking yourself out of that equation and solely relying on the AI to create everything for you,” Montalvo says. “So, it's finding that balance of empathy and understanding, but also being firm and holding the student accountable for their own actions and their own learning.”

Miralles agrees. The worst would be if students were to cut and paste from ChatGPT directly as their own work. Reminding students that faculty are there to help students learn, not just tell them what to do, is what Miralles thinks is important to instill in students.

“You know, I think it's out of respect to tell students like, this is why I'm having you do it, because I think it's valuable for your learning, right?” Miralles says. “This is why I have you understand how to vet your sources, right? Because you want to understand what kind of sources are credible, right? Like, that you can understand what information is something that you can believe, right? So that is a skill you need in everyday life, I think, right?”

Assignments only humans can do  

Software to detect AI has proven to be unreliable, and questioning students about cheating has been difficult. Reflecting on the initial faculty response to ChatGPT, which had struck a policing tone, Montalvo realized there must be underlying reasons students were using ChatGPT instead of producing their own work.

“It's like why students plagiarize for any reason. It's never because of like, ‘Oh, it's easy. I don't wanna do this.’ It's usually because they're stressed, they're unsure about the topic, they don't really understand the topic, like there's a bunch of other reasons behind the plagiarism.”

Miralles says the responsibility of the instructor is to adapt material to ChatGPT and consider what the instructor can do to motivate students to engage with the work. Faculty say the way to push students to create original work has been to emphasize what only students can do — that which is human.

Montalvo, who teaches poetry, points out the times when she suspects a student is using ChatGPT to write a poem. The poems are boring — they lack artistry, depth and personality. Montalvo says she tells them, “I want to know you.”

Miralles encourages assignments that are metacognitive, which is defined as an awareness of one’s own thinking. “As we know, ChatGPT does not have human emotions, so it can't recreate that.”

She suggests asking students about their learning process. “How are they learning? What did they learn from this assignment? What parts of their personal experience can they bring, right?” Miralles says.

Faculty are also discussing how to assess students’ performance in the context of AI. Miralles, as an English instructor, expects that grading criteria can assess students for originality, creativity, and even for the “energy” of their work.

Collaborate on guidance

The faculty trainers at Pasadena City College did not fault their administration for a lack of guidance. They express that it has taken time, the technology is still so new, and that they’re still figuring out how to respond to AI.

There's some evidence to suggest the conversation will need to happen sooner than later. A survey of students in grades 6-12, released Wednesday by the nonpartisan think tank Center for Democracy & Technology, found that students with special needs are more likely than their peers to use generative AI and be disciplined for doing so. That survey also found widespread differences in how educators use AI and discipline students for using it. The center suggests that administrative guidance can provide consistency and protect vulnerable students.

At the moment, the Pasadena City College trainers said faculty-driven guidance is more valuable than the administrative kind. Administrative guidance could run the risk of taking a more punitive stance, policing students, and generating fear.

Eventually, the trainers at Pasadena City College say that the faculty can have open discussions with administration or bring proposed suggestions to the administration that they hope would be supported.

“I think that with any change on any campus, I do think it should always be faculty driven, just because faculty are the ones that are engaging with students,” Miralles says. “So the fact that it's faculty talking about it, I think that's great.”

State and local lawmakers are joining immigrant rights groups in urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would bar California law enforcement from moonlighting for ICE.

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, who represents Angelenos from South L.A. to Mar Vista, introduced AB 1537 in January. If implemented, the bill would ban California police, sheriffs and other law enforcement from taking on second jobs that involve “arresting, detaining, transporting, or deporting” people.

The bill has made its way through the state legislature and is now on the governor’s desk. Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.

At a press conference outside L.A. City Hall on Wednesday, José Madera, who directs the Pasadena Job Center, pointed to multiple deaths involving federal immigration agents in recent months — from Minneapolis to Houston — and to a recent shooting in Austin. “We don't need our local police to be part of that violence,” he said.

“ICE is a lawless, rogue agency that is terrorizing our communities, separating our families and kidnapping our neighbors,” said Bruno Huizar, supervising policy manager at the California Immigrant Policy Center. “Governor Newsom must sign AB 1537 into law to protect Californians.”

L.A. City councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, whose own parents were undocumented, said it pained him to see immigrant parents go to work and to church in fear of being separated from their children.

“If you’re a public servant, you should be serving the public — not helping ICE tear families apart,” he added in a follow-up email statement.

The bill, dubbed “No side jobs for ICE” by its proponents, would also require officers to report secondary employment offers relating to immigration to their employers.

“If a law enforcement agent gets a conditional offer from an immigration enforcement agency, that will be part of their employment records. And that will be subject to a public records act request,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, a licensed attorney at the California Immigration Policy Center. “This is aimed at bringing transparency, so that we know how many officers are actually getting offers to work as an ICE agent or a Border Patrol agent.”

The Peace Officers Research Association of California, which represents officers across the state, has spoken out against the bill, arguing that “policies like this don’t improve public safety.” The Los Angeles Police Protective League did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

The bill is part of a growing effort to bar local law enforcement from engaging in the ongoing mass deportation effort. The L.A. City Council approved a motion in March, barring city employees from holding second jobs with federal immigration enforcement agencies.

In Santa Ana, the City Council recently adopted a policy that prohibits employees from obtaining outside work that involves federal immigration enforcement activities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill aimed at protecting children who are abused.

The law, which went into effect this week, is named “Gabriel’s Law,” after Gabriel Fernandez — an 8-year-old boy in Palmdale who died in 2013 after being tortured and abused by his mother and her boyfriend.

“It devastated the community. Still has,” said State Assemblymember Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale), who worked on legislation related to Gabriel’s case for years. “It hasn't gone away, right? It’s something we still acknowledge.”

Since Fernandez’s death, the Antelope Valley has seen a number of high-profile child deaths at the hands of their parents.

The new law requires social workers to make sure a child gets emergency medical care when needed, and it makes it easier to prosecute social workers who knowingly falsify records.

Officials said there had been warning signs about Fernandez’s abuse, but social workers with the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services failed to follow up on them. The high-profile case prompted internal reforms in the agency.

What happened to Gabriel

Gabriel died in May 2013, after months of abuse from his mother and her boyfriend. He was found with a number of injuries, including a fractured skull, broken ribs and BB pellets lodged in his body. His mother and her boyfriend were both sentenced.

A teacher had reported signs of abuse to the county, but social workers did not remove him from the home. Then they ended the investigation. Prosecutors charged the social workers with child abuse, but the charges were later dismissed.

“He was literally tortured. And there were many, many, many documented events, and there are many encounters that he had with people that lacked follow-up,” Lackey said.

What does the law change?

Before this week, the law said that social workers may authorize care if a child needs immediate emergency care, but did not require it. Gabriel’s law requires a social worker to secure medical care for a child.

“ They call for an ambulance or escort the child to an emergency room— make sure a physician has the opportunity to provide some level of remedy and documentation of the injury,” Lackey said.

It also clarifies the law so that social workers who are guilty of falsifying or destroying public records can be imprisoned or fined.

Why did the law take so long to change?

Lackey’s previous legislative efforts related to Fernandez’s case failed over the years. He introduced at least five different pieces of legislation that failed to advance.

“I'm not even saying that I blame the pushback and the concern, because if you're too aggressive, there's a tendency to accuse people of wrongdoing when they are not guilty of wrongdoing, so we wanted to make sure that the balance was reasonable,” he said.

Lackey terms out this year. “We're trying to do something as a community to not only pay tribute to [Gabriel], but to prevent it from reoccurring,” he said.

The Los Angeles Fire Department has completed its investigation into the cause of the Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights but was unable to determine what caused it. 

In a press release, LAFD said the June 17 fire was caused by an “electrical event” that occurred on the roof of the building, “adjacent to a section of solar panels.” Despite a “comprehensive investigation,” the department could not determine what caused the electrical event.

“The Department’s thoughts remain with all those impacted by this deeply tragic incident,” Arson and Fire Investigation Chief Thomas Raymond said in a release.

In response to the inconclusive investigation, District 14 Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said, “LAFD’s finding that the cause remains undetermined does nothing to alleviate what Boyle Heights residents have endured and are still carrying: months of health concerns and disruption, along with unanswered questions about whether this site can safely operate again.”

“The fact that we still cannot explain how this catastrophe began is yet another reason I will continue opposing any permits to rebuild this facility,” Jurado said.

Recently, the LA City Council voted to withhold rebuilding permits for the Lineage warehouse until after the Los Angeles Fire Department completed its investigation. Earlier this month, Lineage Chief Executive Officer Greg Lehmkuhl told Boyle Heights Beat and The LA Local that the company had not decided whether to rebuild, saying, “We’re still focused on holding the right people accountable here and making sure that we’re continuing to support the community.”

The CEO’s comments came after Lineage sued solar power provider Altus Power, Inc. and its contractor, blaming them for the fire. Altus Power and its contractor dispute those claims.

In a statement following the completed investigation, Lineage said, “Today’s report from the Los Angeles Fire Department validates what we have known all along: This was a solar fire.”

The fire and subsequent cleanup of millions of pounds of rotting food caused a flood of issues for residents living in Boyle Heights, East LA and surrounding communities, including an infestation of flies and pests, nausea and headaches, higher utility bills and other health concerns. 

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Boyle Heights Beat senior reporter Alejandra Molina and LA Local reporter Christopher Damien contributed to this report.

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