Colleges and universities have vastly increased their use of artificial intelligence (AI) across campus and school functions, including core academic functions. While AI tools can improve school efficiency, they are less effective at taking into account the special needs of students with disabilities. If you face college or university disciplinary charges, academic progression issues, or issues with school disability accommodations and services related to the school's use of AI affecting your special needs, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your skilled representation. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for our help resolving your AI-generated special needs issues.
College and University AI Use
Colleges and universities have been swift in adopting AI tools across school functions. Schools deploy AI-supported video surveillance cameras indoors and outdoors, monitoring student movements to flag suspicious conduct. Schools deploy AI detectors to evaluate student academic submissions, as well as to detect AI misuse, ghostwriting, and plagiarism. Schools use AI gaze tracking tools to proctor exams on campus and online through computer screens. Schools also use AI software to monitor student communications and use school technology systems to flag suspected unauthorized access, threats, and harmful or offensive expressions. These are just a few of the many uses of AI by colleges and universities. AI systems constantly surveil, analyze, and report your activities to school officials when on campus or online using school devices or systems.
Special Needs of College and University Students
College and university students can have special needs, whether related to a diagnosed mental or physical condition qualifying under the Americans with Disabilities Act for accommodation, or a non-qualifying or even undiagnosed condition. Schools have the legal obligation and moral commitment to welcome and serve students with special needs. School facilities, furnishings, transportation, instruction, and other functions and services have had decades to adapt to meet students' special needs. Schools may meet students' special needs with handicap ramps, lifts, railings, door designs, desks, seating, lighting, audio assist, visual assist, dietary offerings, and similar facilities, equipment, and service modifications. Sign language interpreters, optical character readers, enlarged or audio texts, and adaptive websites for the visually impaired are other examples of how schools commonly meet the special needs of their students.
AI Impact on Disability Accommodations and Services
Colleges and universities have not, though, had decades to adapt their AI technologies and AI applications to accommodate the special needs of students with diagnosed or undiagnosed, qualifying or non-qualifying disabilities and conditions. The rushed deployment of AI tools across school functions has had significant impacts on students with special needs. Here are some examples of those untoward impacts.
AI Gaze Tracking Proctoring Tools and Special Needs Students
Colleges and universities using AI gaze tracking tools for their exam proctoring subject special needs students to increased risks of false alerts of suspicious behavior and cheating. You may face exam cheating charges simply because your school's AI gaze tracker alerted disciplinary officials, indicating that your eye movements, facial expression, and other demeanor were anomalous and consistent with the behavior of exam cheaters. Students taking exams ordinarily track screen text and images with a predictable pattern of eye movements. AI gaze trackers within proctoring software can work reasonably well for those students with ordinary eye movements.
The problem with AI gaze trackers for special needs students is that the eye movements of an autistic individual or individual with other neurological, psychiatric, or physical conditions, or even with anomalous tics and facial expressions, can appear to AI gaze trackers to be indications of cheating, such as staring at another examinee's screen or responses, or looking down or away as if using unauthorized materials and devices. Let our attorneys help if you face such disciplinary charges.
AI Video Surveillance Tools and Special Needs Students
Colleges and universities using AI video surveillance tools in campus indoor and outdoor spaces can also subject special needs students to increased risks of false alerts of suspicious behavior. You may face behavioral misconduct charges because of your school's use of AI video surveillance tools. Schools once had campus security officers walk the beat. Then, schools moved to assigning campus security officers to sit at banks of video monitors displaying the real-time movement of students around campus. Now, though, schools deploy AI monitoring systems within their video surveillance units, so that the AI tool can alert campus security officers to suspicious activity, no matter what else those officers may be doing.
The problem with AI video monitoring and alert tools for special needs students is that the movements and activities of special needs students are, by definition, anomalous. AI video monitoring systems will naturally issue false alerts around special needs student behavior because those students have special needs. For example, a special needs student may use a wheelchair, walker, cane, crutch, sling, artificial limb or prosthetic, or similar assistive device for ambulation, transfer, seating, or other activity. Any of those devices and the peculiar movements they enable could trigger false AI alerts, if not handled properly, resulting in disciplinary charges. Special needs students may alternatively move without a device but in a peculiar pattern, such as the rocking behavior, flat affect, and eye avoidance of an autistic student, any of which could trigger a false AI alert, resulting in disciplinary charges. Let us help you defend and defeat any such charges.
AI Audio Surveillance and Special Needs Students
Colleges and universities also deploy AI-assisted audio monitoring systems. AI video surveillance systems in public places may also have AI audio monitoring functions, but schools must generally reserve video surveillance systems for campus public spaces. Video surveillance of restrooms, locker and shower facilities, dormitory rooms, and other private spaces could unlawfully invade student privacy. Schools may, though, rely on AI audio surveillance systems in those private spaces, especially in a public campus restroom, to monitor for gunshots, screams of alarm or pain, calls for help, and audio suggesting facility damage. For behaviors of individuals with normal capabilities, those AI audio systems can be great aids or even lifesavers.
The problem with AI audio monitoring for special needs students is that the sounds, language, and expressions of special needs students can be anomalous. AI audio monitoring systems might naturally issue alerts when a special needs student with Tourette's syndrome, for instance, has an outburst characteristic of the syndrome, and therefore is not alarming to the student or others present who know the student's condition. Emotional agitation characteristic of autism and other mental disabilities and conditions can also express itself in anomalous voice patterns. But it's not just emotional differences. The anomalies can extend to voice volume, voice patterns, and even differences in terms and expressions. Histrionic character and overly dramatic exaggeration can all trigger AI alerts, wreaking havoc for the special needs student in disciplinary charges. Let us help if these are your AI issues.
AI Electronic Monitoring and Special Needs Students
Colleges and universities also use AI monitoring systems for their communications, computer, and other electronic systems and devices. AI tools can monitor student emails, student posts on electronic discussion boards, student access to school learning management systems, and other student electronic texts. Those systems can flag threats, severe mental health issues such as suicidal ideation, profanity, terms and phrases associated with explosive devices, pornography, or sex trafficking, and all manner of other student behavior implicating school safety, security, and conduct codes. These systems can save substantial administrator time in monitoring communications, allowing administrators to do other things until called to respond to an AI alert.
The problem with AI electronic monitoring for special needs students is that special needs students, especially those with mental or emotional disabilities, or personality, psychological, or psychiatric disorders, may use anomalous expressions, exaggerated language, and other means of communicating that AI systems interpret as threatening, offensive, harassing, or otherwise in violation of school behavior codes. Let us help if you face a disciplinary charge over a false AI alert from an electronic monitoring system.
AI Detection Software and Special Needs Students
Colleges and universities also use AI detection software to analyze when students are using AI text generators, translators, graphics generators, and similar generative AI tools in their academic studies and submission of academic work for credit. AI cheating, plagiarism, and ghostwriting, for example, are genuine academic misconduct concerns for college and university administrators. When professors prohibit students from using AI to write or improve essay papers, take notes, record and summarize class discussions, create outlines, or do other academic work that the professor believes is valuable for the student to do, then students should generally not be using AI against the professor's directions.
The problem with AI detection software for special needs students is that special needs students may have school disability accommodations or need and deserve those accommodations, but using AI tools. Note-taking services for students with mental, physical, or cognitive disabilities, for instance, are common disability accommodations in higher education. Yet if a student with a note taking accommodation uses the appropriate AI tool to take notes, summarize class discussion, and create outlines, all within the disability accommodation, the school's AI detection software may flag the student's work, resulting in disciplinary charges for cheating, plagiarism, ghostwriting, or similar honor code violations. Let us help you if you face such a disciplinary charge.
AI Policy Interpretations and Special Needs Students
Colleges and universities also communicate AI policies to students in a variety of ways and with varying clarity and consistency. Schools may include AI policies in their honor codes or student handbooks. Departments may add AI policies and interpretations to their student rules and guides. Professors may add course AI policies and interpretations in their syllabi, add further AI rules and interpretations in their written directions for assignments, and then add further AI rules, interpretations, and exceptions in their oral statements when discussing assignments in class or conferences. All that varying and at times inconsistent or outright contradictory information may still work reasonably well for students with normal capacities. After all, the school, department, and professors adjust their communications to serve that normal student population.
The problem with multiple AI policy communications for special needs students is that special needs students may perform poorly on their uptake, processing, recall, interpretation, and application of those varying communications. A special needs student with an educational disability requiring a greater degree of clarity and consistency in communication content and forms may misinterpret an AI policy, misuse AI for an assignment in which the school, department, or professor intended to prohibit it, and thus trigger an AI detection alert and disciplinary charge. Let us help you if you face such a disciplinary charge.
Invoking Disability Accommodations and Services
If you face any of the above special needs issues with your school's use of AI tools, our attorneys can take your issues to your school's disability accommodations coordinator for advocacy, negotiation, and resolution. Colleges and universities generally maintain dispute resolution procedures for disabled students who face difficulty obtaining needed accommodations and services. See, for example, Florida State University's Grievance/Complaint Procedure for Persons with Disabilities. Our attorneys can help you prepare, submit, and advocate your grievance, negotiating or winning appropriate relief through the interactive process that these resolutions typically require.
Effective advocacy of Americans with Disabilities Act rights and related grounds for school accommodations can take a reliable diagnosis of the disability and reliable professional opinions on the educational impairment the disability causes and the specific accommodations that will relieve the impairment. We can work with you and the appropriate medical and disability accommodations professionals to gather the appropriate opinions and their documentation in the form your school requires to obtain the relief you need. We can also invoke conciliation conferences, hearings, and appeals available within your school's disability grievance procedure. Don't go it alone, without our effective advocacy. Let us carry the burden of grievance procedures so that you can attend to your studies.
Disciplinary Charges for AI Use and Special Needs
You've seen from the above discussion how AI monitors, detectors, gaze trackers, and other tools can trigger false alerts, resulting in disciplinary charges against special needs students. The connection between false AI alerts and disciplinary charges may not be obvious to you. You might reasonably assume that disciplinary officials would carefully review, evaluate, and sort false AI alerts from genuine AI alerts, to charge only those students whose actions clearly implicate the school's code of conduct. Yet too often, busy administrative officials take AI alerts not as red flags for investigation but as gospel that the implicated student committed a disciplinary offense. They do not, in other words, use the AI alert properly as an alert but instead use it as a presumptive or conclusive finding.
And that's how disciplinary charges result against special needs students whom AI tools inappropriately flagged as dangerous, disruptive, cheating, suicidally depressed, or otherwise misbehaving. The challenge for special needs students of false AI-generated disciplinary charges is that special needs students often have little mental and emotional reserve, social and relational skills, or administrative and procedural experience to navigate college or university disciplinary charges. Special needs students thus face not just the added potential for false AI alerts. Special needs students also face the extraordinary personal challenge that school security and disciplinary interventions present, even to students with normal capacities, causing even greater stress, alarm, and burden.
Defending AI-Generated Disciplinary Charges
Just because you face an AI-generated disciplinary charge from a false alert event does not mean that you must or will suffer a disciplinary sanction. Don't give up hope when facing disciplinary charges. Charges are only allegations, not findings of fact. We may be able to prove that the AI system raised a false flag, did not capture and record any violation, and instead misinterpreted your innocent special needs behavior. We may be able to show that, to whatever degree your special needs behavior implicated conduct issues, you had mitigating circumstances in your condition, which you have now further addressed with remedial measures. We may also be able to show that federal and state disability laws mandate that the school relieve you from the AI monitoring and disciplinary charges, and instead accommodate your educational rights and needs. Let us raise these and other defenses on your behalf.
Invoking Disciplinary Charge Protective Procedures
Don't let your AI-generated disciplinary charges overwhelm you. Instead, get our skilled and experienced representation to unburden you from the emotional and procedural load. Colleges and universities maintain disciplinary procedures that satisfy student rights to due process. For example, the University of Wisconsin's student disciplinary procedures are codified in the Wisconsin Administrative Code Chapter UWS 14. Our attorneys can invoke similar protective procedures at your school on your behalf, as soon as you retain us to handle your AI-generated disciplinary charges. We can answer your charges with a timely and appropriate filing raising all your available defenses. Our answer notifies your school's disciplinary officials that we intend to advocate for your defense diligently on your behalf.
Advocating Reconciliation and Accommodation
Our appearance on the accused student's behalf often opens lines of informal communication, through which we can arrange an early conciliation conference. At that conference, we can present your defense evidence while advocating for voluntary dismissal of the charges and for recognition and accommodation of your special needs. We may be able to involve school disability accommodations coordinators in the disciplinary resolution meeting. If school officials remain concerned about your ability and willingness to meet school academic and behavioral requirements, we can offer remedial measures that you have already approved or completed, such as modified accommodations or additional training, mentoring, and support. Let us help resolve your disciplinary charges with an early settlement effort.
Disciplinary Hearing and Appeal Representation
If your AI-generated disciplinary charges proceed to the formal hearing stage, we can help you prepare for the hearing, arrange the attendance of your witnesses at the hearing, and present your evidence to advocate for a favorable result. For example, the University of Wisconsin procedures for the disciplinary hearing are codified in Wisconsin Administrative Code Section UWS 14.08. We can also research, draft, and file hearing briefs, make opening statements and closing arguments, and challenge adverse witnesses through cross-examination. If you have already lost your disciplinary hearing, we can take your available disciplinary appeals, including drafting and filing the appeal brief, making oral appeal arguments, and conducting any available appeal settlement conferences.
Alternative Special Relief
If you have already lost your formal hearing, failed to gain disability accommodations through school grievance procedures, and lost all other formal appeals, our attorneys may be able to gain alternative special relief from your AI-generated special needs issues. Colleges and universities maintain general counsel offices, risk management offices, and other oversight channels to address the school's litigation, liability, and regulatory risks. Our attorneys have the relationships and reputation with school oversight officials to maintain their trust and confidence, and to engage in communications and negotiations toward oversight resolution. We may be able to reinstate your enrollment, remove your disciplinary sanction, clear your record, and provide you with appropriate accommodations through these alternative informal avenues. If not, we may be able to pursue your matter in a state or federal regulatory action or civil court case.
Premier Student Defense Available
If you are a special needs student facing AI-generated college or university disciplinary charges, or you need your school's disability accommodation for relief from AI prohibitions and monitoring, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team to advocate effectively for your full rights. We have helped hundreds of students nationwide successfully resolve disciplinary charges and address special needs and other accommodation rights. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys, and for the best possible outcome to your AI-generated school issues.
