Beware the bots

SHAYNE TAMKIN Reporter

Anew bot scam has been sweeping community colleges across the state, leaving professors weary.

The California Student Aid Commision found that 105 of 116 colleges in the California Community College system were the targets of a financial aid scam, according to an article from the Los Angeles Times.

Pierce College professor Angela Belden said this fraud scam takes money away from real students who could need help to make sure they can further their education.

Student financial aid is exactly what it says it's for— it's for students, it's to help them," Belden said. "It's to help people get an education. I personally used financial aid to get an education, and would not have been able to get an education without it.”

Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs DonnaMae Villanueva sent an email to faculty dictating how to assess if they have a bot in their class and what actions should be taken.

"They should drop students who are inactive from their rosters. So if a student is not engaged in any of the class, class activities etc, then that could be a bot," Villanueva said.

Villanueva added that although the faculty is trying their best, there are still instances that slip through the cracks.

“Our numbers were just a little over 300 [bots]” which implies that the system itself is not perfect and has room for improvement.

Distance Education Coordinator Wendy Bass said that although it may seem straightforward, there are many more processes to checking if a student is a bot rather than just “dropping them.” proceed with the issue.

“Well, I’m assuming with no one showing up from plant facilities, this basically means we have no custodial staff and no trade staff. So I’m kind of under that assumption,” Van Dyke said.

Responding to Van Dyke, Schleicher explained that it is unclear whether or not staff will return to campus on Tuesday.

In the meantime, he is working with Academic Affairs, the deans and interim Vice President of Academic Affairs Donna-Mae Villanueva on how to inform and notify Pierce faculty of the current situation.

Schleicher advised all the meeting attendees to be sensitive to the topic when the plant facilities faculty return to campus.

Political science professor Denise Robb suggested Pierce hire more faculty and staff to combat understaffing issues and asked questions regarding new hires.

“Well I could tell you for sure that the quicker you hire more people, the better things are going to be for faculty and staff,” Robb said.

Schleicher responded by discussing the impact of COVID-19 on custodial faculty. He explained that many individuals were working overtime to ensure the campus was safe and sanitized for the fall semester. Pierce is currently working on hiring individuals who can do interim work.

“So we were working some overtime and we got the list from the district,” Schleicher said.

“It was a list of up to 34 people that they said were available. By the next day, we put every submission in, every submission to the district and were waiting for those hires to transpire. It did not. But finding eligible people who want to do interim work, such as custodial work, that’s been a challenge for us.”

Despite the challenge of gaining custodial hires, Pierce made progress in the hiring process of the two vice president positions: the VP of Academic Affairs (VPAA) and VP of Student Services (VPSS).

“We have gone through the whole process to the sense that we’re now at the point of going to interviews,” Schleicher said. “We’ll be conducting [VPAA] interviews in the next week. We have a strong pool of candidates. We feel very good about that.”

Schleicher hopes to complete the VPAA interview process by the middle of October. His goal is to complete the VP of Student Services hiring process by the end of December.

Issues such faculty retiring and a large cost structure have made the hiring process more challenging. However, the school’s HERF funds have provided financial relief during this process, according to Schleicher.

Drops in student enrollment have also complicated the faculty hiring situation.

Interim President Ara Aguiar compared Fall 2021 enrollment statistics to those from past years. She emphasized the large enrollment gap from the Fall 2019 semester.

“Our enrollment compared to fall 19 is down, has shrunk by 24 percent and compared to fall 20, we are down 15 percent and that is equal to 100 less sections from fall 19,” Aguiar said.

She explained that if there are 100 fewer sections, with 35 students per section, there is a gap of 3,500 fewer students since the fall 2019 semester.

"We need more students,” Aguiar said. “We need to add classes wherever we can. We need to maximize and leverage our resources as much as we can here.”

“I have had people contact me, trying to figure out if I think a student is a bot or a real person,” Bass said. “So we will do some investigating, see what classes they are registered in, how often they registered and if they've ever submitted any work," Bass said.

One thing Bass told teachers to do is to have some initial assessment to prove they are a real person.

“Students have to submit something like an introduction about themselves, or my students often do something like a syllabus quiz.”

But this still does not seem to be preventing the issue of bots.

Chair of History and Humanities Brian Walsh said that some of the bots are even able to fake responses to some professors, leaving the department searching for new answers.

“When faculty were writing them, they would always say like prof instead of professor,” Walsh said. “One of my faculty picked up on it and she's very tech savvy. At first, we were just like wow this is really trippy. But then, you know, it hits you like, no, this is like a well coordinated fraud scheme.”