A Chinese student at the University of Minnesota (UMN) was expelled for allegedly using artificial intelligence (AI) on a test in 2024. The student is suing UMN officials for violating his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. The test in question was a preliminary doctoral exam in UMN’s School of Public Health. UMN’s disciplinary Hearing relied heavily on GPTZero, a tool designed to detect AI-generated text.
UMN professor Hannah Neprash referred the matter to UMN’s Office for Community Standards (OCS). Next, UMN’s Campus Committee on Student Behavior (CCSB) put the student on trial for violating the Student Conduct Code’s prohibition of misconduct, defined to include “plagiarism” and “cheating.” The CCSB panel found the student guilty.
UMN vice provost Scott Lanyon rejected the student’s appeal of the judgment. According to Lanyon, the signs of AI generation were “published by OCS on its website regarding how to identify AI usage.” But OCS’s list of prohibited AI-style language is not actually on the OCS website at all. OCS director Sharon Dzik wrote in an email that I obtained that “We do not have a powerpoint on our website on how to catch AI.” OCS coordinator Katelyn Sanders added: “We do not have a presentation on how to catch AI.”
Instead, Sanders offered lists, from a blog and Forbes, of words “overused” by AI. Sanders explained that although “having a couple of these words or phrases does not immediately flag a student as using AI, by using multiple of these in one assignment red flags go off for me.”
In rejecting the Chinese student’s appeal, Lanyon further wrote: “the academy has no tolerance for academic dishonesty in PhD programs or among faculty.” But this statement is plainly false, because UMN does indeed tolerate academic dishonesty.
[RELATED: Why Plagiarism Matters]
UMN Accepts Plagiarism and Use of ChatGPT on Tests
According to UMN’s policy for investigating misconduct, “a finding of research misconduct requires that there be a significant departure from accepted practices of the relevant academic community.” However, no one at UMN’s hearing made any effort to characterize these “accepted practices.”
For example, a set of UMN professors co-authored the 2022 paper describing how they “used ChatGPT to produce answers to final exams … copying and pasting the content of the exam question.” UMN accepted this practice.
Chapter 3 of Neprash’s dissertation was copied from a pair of duplicate articles published three months earlier with two co-authors. Neprash failed to cite either of these prior works and failed to enclose copied passages in quotation marks within the dissertation. According to UMN, “plagiarism” means representing the words of another as one’s own, such as copying without quotation marks or in-text citation. UMN accepted this practice.
In 2012, UMN vice provost Lanyon supervised Alexis Frederick Leo Alvey Powell’s PhD dissertation. Chapter 1 of the dissertation was copied from a 2008 paper co-authored by Lanyon himself. UMN accepted this practice.
UMN violated its own policy when it found the Chinese student guilty of taking credit for ChatGPT’s words without quotation marks or citation. Such an act is not a significant departure from the accepted practices of the UMN academic community.
[RELATED: Is Plagiarism Now the Sincerest Form of Flattery?]
Problems with UMN’s Hearing
The 2023 article “GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers” reported that AI detectors falsely characterized most essays by Chinese writers as being AI-generated. Another article reported that GPTZero had a 50 percent probability of making a false accusation. A 2023 article found that GPTZero falsely reported human writing was “Likely AI-Generated.” These results should have disqualified GPTZero’s report. Moreover, the report states on its final page: “these results should not be used to punish students.” By violating GPTZero’s contractual terms and conditions, UMN used inadmissible evidence that was “fruit of the poisonous tree.”
In Minnesota, when a public body closes a meeting, it must first identify the statutory authority permitting a closed meeting and specifically describe what will be discussed. However, none of that is in the hearing transcript from when prosecutor Sharon Dzik called for a closed “breakout session.” After the secret deliberations, UMN attorney Murray announced, “we’re just going to cease this particular line of questioning” by the defense.
UMN supposedly prohibits nepotism. But at the hearing, accuser Neprash revealed that “I share my ChatGPT login with my spouse,” UMN law professor Alan Rozenshtein, who is teaching “Artificial Intelligence and the Law” in Spring 2025. UMN’s presiding attorney, JaneAnne Murray, testified at the hearing that “he is our AI expert” within the law school. The Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct, Rule 2.11, requires judges to disqualify themselves when they have been associated with someone who participated substantially as a lawyer in the matter. Yet UMN attorney Murray did not disqualify herself.
One of the strangest aspects of the disciplinary hearing is that it might not have actually taken place at all. UMN has no record of votes by UMN’s “Committee on Committees” to select the CCSB members who allegedly reached the “guilty” verdict. According to its “Committee Charge,” CCSB members are chosen by the Senate Committee on Committees (CoC), and Minnesota Statute 13D.01 subd. 4.(a) requires that the committee’s votes be recorded.
The problem here is not that CCSB members voted to expel the student and the CoC simply can’t locate its records of selecting these members. Instead, the CoC did not vote those members into office without creating a record of the votes. But in the absence of records of the CoC’s vote for CCSB members, the hearing resulted in a void judgment due to the lack of lawfully chosen panelists.
A void judgment is an absolute nullity; all acts performed under it are also nullities, having no force or effect, conferring no rights, and binding nobody; it is good nowhere and bad everywhere, invalidity of which may be asserted by any person whose rights are affected at any time and at any place.
Image: “Mayo Memorial Building, main home of the School of Public Health” by Sphnews on Wikipedia
