“It is the Novocain of Your Mind:” New Haven Students Protest AI Use in the Classroom

New Haven ACES Educational Center for the Arts high schoolers walked out during the school day to demand no more AI use by the school’s administration or faculty.

Approximately 200 ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) students walked out of an assembly yesterday afternoon to protest AI use by school administration and teachers. A corresponding petition gathered 142 signatures; the form also included 92 students who volunteered to make posters for ECA so that the school would no longer use AI to design schoolwide flyers.

The idea for the protest began when a high school junior, Gabriel, won an election for student advisor of the ECA theater department and the school created an AI-generated poster to announce his win. Gabriel was upset that his image, unbeknownst to him, was fed to an AI algorithm. He thought he was the only one who wanted to stop AI use in the school—but when discussing his frustration with other students, he found the majority of his peers were also fed up with the technology.

“At my sending school, kids didn't even know how to write an essay without AI,” said Gabriel. “I thought ECA would be my escape from AI.”

He got connected to Ash, a senior at ECA and student advisor in the writing department and the two organized the petition and walk-out to send a strong message to school leadership. Noticing the student frustration with AI, the school administration organized an assembly to open dialogue on the technology;

However, students felt their opinions were not being heard and respected by administrators. According to Ash, the assembly did not respect students’ demands, and served instead as a way to quiet down frustration of AI. They felt the focus was on finding the positives in the technology rather than acknowledging its detriments, and were upset at the suggestion that AI should be used in creative processes at ECA, like brainstorming.

During the assembly, the school administration also instructed students to talk to each other in groups about the pros and cons of AI use, which students found “infantilizing” and saw as a tactic to not engage with the students’ demands.

Principal Salvo did not respond to The Arts Paper’s request for comment. However, she sent an email to ECA parents after the protest, which was posted on New Haven Reddit:

Our intention was to create a safe, respectful space where students and staff could engage in open dialogue, share concerns, listen to different perspectives, and begin working toward solutions together. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to provide this opportunity for conversation and collaboration, many students still chose to participate in the planned walkout.

While the email did not mention the administration’s use of AI in designed materials, the email identified the protest as being about “AI use at ECA”; the students are not only frustrated by AI posters in school, but also in the curriculum itself.

ACES student Ari noticed that in the theater department, students were given AI-generated monologues to review. “We come here to practice what we're good at, and it's the arts. If [school leadership] is not representing us and what we do, then what's the use of ECA?”

Some students find that AI also encourages more people to not enter the arts at all: “I animate and like that just hurts to see someone like, ‘Oh, I can't draw or animate. I'll just put it in through something like ChatGPT or some other AI app,’” said Freshman visual arts student Elena. “Just pick up a pencil. It's not that hard.”

“I think it's an absolute travesty that an art school would have anything to do with it,” said ECA student Alex. “They're trying to get more kids to do art, and that's just antithetical to everything that generative AI is.” Alex pointed to an Oscar Wilde quote outside The Little Theater, where protesters gathered, that reads, ‘Art is the most intense mode of individual expression that the world has ever known.’ As Alex sees it, ECA is making that sentiment into “a total joke” by using AI at school.

Although the protest stemmed from students’ frustration with ECA’s AI use, many of the students were also protesting AI use in their home districts. ECA students go to the arts magnet high school Monday through Thursday for only part of the day, and otherwise attend in-district schools across Connecticut.

“They don't use their brains. They don't learn,” said senior student Philip, referring to students who use AI. “This protest isn’t just because we saw an AI poster in ECA, it's [about] having kids that don't even know where Connecticut or Texas is on the map, using AI because they don't know better. And it's not even their fault. It's just the world they live in.”

“We're dying in the comfort,” said Philip, referring to AI use in ECA and beyond. “It is a numbing agent. It is the Novocain of your mind.”