Student expelled for using ChatGPT for assignment and apology email
A student at St. Peter's University was expelled from an English class for submitting a ChatGPT-written assignment, then sent an AI-generated apology email rather than apologizing directly. The incident, reported by Prof. Dr. Stephen Cicirelli on social media, sparked widespread debate about AI use in education and academic integrity.
What happened
A student in Prof. Dr. Stephen Cicirelli's English department class at St. Peter's University submitted a research assignment written by ChatGPT. When the student was expelled from the course, he sent Cicirelli an apology email that was also written by ChatGPT.
Cicirelli identified the apology as AI-generated because it did not match the student's known writing style. He posted about the incident on X on 15 May 2025, stating: 'I failed a student for submitting an AI-written research paper. He then sent me an apology email that was clearly written by ChatGPT. We've gone beyond the looking glass now.'
Reported impact
The post went viral, generating approximately 15 million interactions. It reignited debate about the harms of AI use in education, including concerns about authenticity, academic ethics, and the erosion of trust between students and teachers.
Cicirelli expressed concern that students are using AI as a 'personal representative' rather than just as an information source, damaging the relationship between teachers and students.
Index analysis
The incident illustrates ChatGPT's capability to generate text that can pass as human work in academic contexts, including apologetic communication. Cicirelli's awareness of his student's actual writing style was the method by which the deception was detected.
The case highlights how unreliability and hallucination in educational settings undermine academic integrity and institutional trust. It demonstrates that students may rely on AI systems to perform acts of contrition without authentic engagement.
Governance controls
Prof. Cicirelli enforced course expulsion as a disciplinary response to the use of AI-generated work. He stated his motivation was not to demonstrate that students use AI, but to respond to what he saw as the more serious breach: the student using AI to avoid genuine accountability by falsely apologizing.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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