SINGAPORE: A student from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has accused the institution of misrepresenting students and evading accountability in an ongoing dispute over the alleged misuse of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in academic work.
Taking to Reddit on Sunday (22 June), the student, a Year 3 undergraduate in public policy and global affairs, claimed that NTU’s recent public statement on the matter was misleading and failed to properly address evidence she and other students had provided.
The student shared her story on Reddit on 19 June, alleging that her professor had accused her of using GenAI to write an essay after identifying three citation mistakes or typos in her submission.
As a result, she received a grade of zero, severely affecting her GPA, along with a permanent academic warning labelling her as having committed academic fraud.
She said that despite submitting evidence—including Google Docs version histories, a full timelapse of her writing process recorded via the Draftback Chrome extension, and samples of previous essays—NTU refused to reconsider its decision.
In a follow-up Reddit post on 20 June, she alleged that a total of five students were falsely accused in a similar fashion, either for citation mistakes or for using citation formatters, which she claimed the professor wrongly categorised as GenAI.
NTU’s Response: Academic Misconduct
Responding to media queries, NTU confirmed that three students had received zero marks for a written assignment in a health and politics module after being found to have used GenAI tools in their submissions.
According to NTU’s statement to The Straits Times on 22 June, the decision followed an investigation in April, with the affected students informed in early May.
The university said that the students were penalised for academic misconduct due to non-existent academic references, fictitious statistics, and broken web links in their essays.
NTU added that repeated warnings against using AI tools had been communicated throughout the semester by the course instructor, understood to be Assistant Professor Sabrina Luk from the School of Social Sciences.
The essay contributed 45 per cent to the students’ final grades.
Student’s Rebuttal: ‘False Information’
In her Reddit post, the student strongly rejected NTU’s account, claiming that the university’s statement to the media contained “multiple false pieces of information,” all of which she said could be disproven with evidence.
Anticipating that NTU would “salvage its reputation,” she uploaded her evidence to a Google Drive folder to counter the university’s claims.
She rejected NTU’s assertion of “non-existent academic references,” stating that the students had submitted real sources, with only minor mistakes such as misspellings of author names or article titles.
She pointed out that even the course syllabus provided by Assistant Professor Luk contained a broken web link (https://www.ntu.edu.sg/404), questioning whether that too constituted academic misconduct.
The student provided further screenshots showing that she and her peers had repeatedly supplied supporting documents to the professor and school administrators.
These included corrected citations and a full timelapse of her essay-writing process.
“And yet, NTU chooses to ignore an entire video of my writing process, and dismiss everything as AI-generated,” she wrote.
In one appeal, the student argued that citation typos could not reasonably be equated to academic dishonesty, particularly when compared to NTU’s own definition of academic fraud.
However, she alleged that the appeal was ignored.
“For NTU to characterise human typos as ‘non-existent citations’ is false information and incredibly lazy,” she said, accusing the university of prioritising its reputation over properly defending its students.
‘Due Process Was Not Followed’
The student also questioned NTU’s claim that the students had been given a fair chance to present their cases.
While NTU said students were allowed to present their cases during a formal review, she said that the process consisted only of email exchanges.
In one student’s case, she alleged that no online hearing was provided, and the entire outcome was conveyed via email.
She shared a screenshot of NTU’s notification, which read: “After a thorough review of the evidence, it has been determined that your behaviour constitutes academic misconduct. Consequently, a zero mark has been assigned to the long essay.”
The students were also informed that they could not exercise the fail grade option (FGO) for the course and that the incident would be formally recorded in NTU’s central academic misconduct register.
“There was not a single in-person meeting scheduled this entire time for us to present our cases in a fair manner,” the student said.
The student further alleged that NTU’s statement to the press failed to acknowledge that the school had ignored their appeals for two months.
She shared a string of emails sent to NTU’s academic integrity officer, Professor Ye Junjia, who allegedly responded by siding with Assistant Professor Sabrina Luk without providing any explanation as to why their actions constituted academic fraud.
According to the student, the affected students had requested face-to-face meetings, but allegedly received no response.
The School of Social Sciences Dean, she added, dismissed her appeal and instead offered to refer her to student welfare services.
“We have been ghosted by the NTU President as well,” she said.
She claimed that one of the students had repeatedly called and visited the offices of Professor Ye Junjia and Professor Chia Wai Mun, who were involved in the investigation, but was consistently told they were “not in” or “on holiday.”
Multiple calls also went unanswered.
Given these experiences, the students argued that it was misleading for NTU to claim they had been given a fair chance to present their cases.
Citation Sorter vs. AI Tool Debate
The student also criticised NTU’s claim that she used an “AI-powered essay writing service,” clarifying that she had used StudyCrumb, a free citation sorter, to alphabetise her references.
“StudyCrumb is literally just a website to arrange citations in A-Z order,” she explained.
“If you Google ‘citation sorter A-Z’, it’s one of the top results.”
She argued that NTU’s framing was designed to “villainise students” rather than acknowledge that citation sorting tools have been widely available long before generative AI became mainstream.
“This shows that NTU is willing to throw students under the bus just to evade accountability,” she said.
Additionally, she pointed out that the course guidelines only prohibited the use of AI in the generation or development of essay content, not in formatting citations.
“Note that in our cases, we were penalised for citations, not for the essay content itself,” she said.
Allegations of Institutional Neglect
The student accused NTU of displaying a pattern of institutional neglect by distorting facts to protect its public image.
“It is deeply unethical for an institution like NTU, entrusted with the responsibility of protecting its students, to mischaracterise legitimate student concerns and grievances,” she said.
Instead of providing transparent support, she alleged that the university failed to acknowledge its own shortcomings and ignored students who sought accountability from upper management.
The students questioned whether NTU would apply the same standards to all other essays submitted at the university, asking: “Did everyone else do their citations perfectly?”
“If NTU truly cared, they would have reached out to all the affected students by now, but all we got was radio silence—until the media got involved,” she added.
The post NTU student accuses university of misrepresentation over generative AI misconduct case appeared first on The Online Citizen.
