By OCEANA FELIPE-SIRNIC

The Seton Hill Programming Board and Student Affairs have come up with a new way to reach students around campus, dubbed the Griffin SMS Chatbot. Vice President of Student Affairs Rosalie Carpenter & Assistant Director of Residence Life Re’Onna Durham have been among the few to get this new program up and running.   

Seton Hill University has many resources to keep track of students’ success.  Starfish and academic success coaching helps to maintain this success giving Seton Hill real feedback on where their students are.  These initial resources have led to the idea of the Griffin SMS Chatbot.  They hope to build on the ways in which they can provide resources to students seeking assistance and lead them to overall success. 

 The Griffin SMS Chatbot is an online messaging system used to reach students through their devices. This creates a more rapid way to communicate student resources and questions.  With the exponential growth of technology in today’s era, phones are one of the biggest ways to access information from across the globe. Therefore, the Griffin SMS Chatbot is sure to reach students in a digital and more common way of communication.  

Carpenter stated, “ … a bot should respond with the same values and approach as a Setonian.” This is to ensure that with new additions to Seton Hill University we are staying aligned with past and current values that the campus maintains. Campus growth and improvement are always encouraged from all areas as long as they are staying within the borders of what Seton Hill University stands for.  

Durham was also able to give insight on the relevance of Griffin SMS Chatbot.  Durham said, it is “another way for us to touch base with students.”  Again we are able to position students for their success in college.

Sophomore Student Stephanie Price had some concerns about the new Chatbot.  She emphasized the many risks that come with using a Chatbot, that is specifically AI generated.  “Generative AI is extremely bad for the environment,” she said.  Price also pointed out the lack of purpose the Chatbot serves.  In her experience so far, she said, “I feel like the information it gives—while it’s meant to be helpful—it’s not … needed.” “There are other ways to access that information. I feel like a good majority of people already know about all of those resources that it mentioned.”  Finally she asked, “Why are you spending money on a chatbot nobody asked for when there are other uses for the schools money that people actually want to see and have been asking for?”