West Chester University used AI in its graduation ceremony without knowing it, officials say
A petition organized by a senior student and signed by more than 1,000 urges the university to reconsider the "impersonal" practice.
West Chester University faced criticism from students this past week over a school contractor that uses AI to deliver name announcements at graduation ceremonies and has been urged to reconsider the “impersonal” practice.
“We, as students, want to challenge this decision, stressing the need for a human announcer at our graduation ceremony, thus preserving the tradition and personalization that this momentous occasion warrants,” says a petition organized by senior Elisa Magello and signed by more than 1,000 people.
On Tuesday, WCU issued a statement on social media in response to the petition denying that AI was used in any previous graduation ceremony and assuring the community that “AI will not be used in any future commencement ceremonies to announce our graduates’ names.”
Then the university backtracked in a separate statement on Friday, saying that the graduation contractor, Tassel, did in fact use what the company calls “AI pre-recorded name announcements” for the first time in last fall’s commencement. WCU officials said they were entirely unaware of any AI involvement in the process until the students’ petition and a reporter at Axios brought it to their attention, and thanked students “for prompting further investigation.”
The school initially hired the company, previously called MarchingOrder, last spring for ticketing software and other graduation support services, which it provides for other local institutions including the University of Pennsylvania and Community College of Philadelphia, according to its website. Representatives for Penn and CCP were not immediately available for comment Saturday.
Last fall, WCU administrators — looking to avoid name mispronunciations that had marred many students’ experiences in past ceremonies — contracted with Tassel for professionally recorded name announcements. WCU officials believed that the recordings came from trained voice actors, but in September, Tassel began using AI to clone their actors’ voices, and that change was not properly communicated to the school, said Jeffery Osgood Jr., WCU executive vice president and provost.
“The company indicated they sent that information to an employee here at West Chester, but that employee is no longer responsible for commencement,” said Osgood in a phone call with The Inquirer on Saturday. “It was definitely not part of our contract with the company and it was not clear to us from their product description.”
He added that the school had selected a specific voice actor from a list of readers based on audio samples that Tassel provided. “We actually identified a particular human that we wanted to use for the announcements,” Osgood said. “There were no indicators that should suggest [AI involvement].” Representatives at Tassel did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Historically, WCU has enlisted volunteer faculty and staff to read graduates’ names, with mixed results, according to Osgood. Mispronunciations are a common problem at institutions across the country and cause real pain to students and families — many of whom are people of color or international students — who say botched pronunciations ruin the milestone celebration. (Just ask the graduates from Thomas Jefferson University last spring, when the announcer went viral for bungling dozens of names, including “Thomas.”)
At WCU, years of complaints motivated officials to pursue professional announcers and Osgood said the fall ceremony was a big success.
“I did not see one disappointed face going across that commencement stage this past fall, and that really felt good,” Osgood said. “I remember turning to president [Laurie Bernotsky] saying, ‘Wow, we really got this one right. These students are leaving here focused on this amazing accomplishment, instead of [feeling] sad about the university letting them down in their moment of achievement.’”
Tassel CEO Chase Rigby told Axios that the AI-powered technology “produced more than 1,000 names with 84% accuracy (verified by students)” for the fall graduation. Rigby reported that the remaining 16% of names were recorded by voice actors. Students are given the opportunity to hear the AI-generated recordings before the ceremony and if they disapprove, a voice actor records it.
On Friday Osgood spoke with Rigby, who said using AI helps to lower the cost of the services for universities, but the provost said “cost was not a factor here for us, we wanted to get it right.” He also said he asked Rigby if it’s possible to return to the initial system of professional announcers without AI.
Moving forward, Osgood said the administration will consult WCU’s Student Government Association to ask how students want to proceed for the upcoming commencement in May.
“What do they prioritize most? Do they prioritize a human voice, who can professionally read names and achieve the accuracy that we would expect for our students?” he asked. “Or would they want something that is less accurate and more apt to disappoint students at commencement?”