Duke announces ‘victory over grade inflation’ following ShatGPT outage

After a technical issue at one of SlightlyAjarAI’s computing centers left popular AI chatbot ShatGPT down for nearly 48 hours, Duke has announced that grades have plummeted to their lowest levels since the internet became mainstream.

“Yeah, it’s probably just a coincidence,” President Fincent Spice said at an emergency press conference. “We’ve been working really hard to fix grade inflation for a number of years, and this result is just the product of all that, I guess.”

The grade decrease was most visible in the economics and computer science departments, although department heads argued that the ShatGPT outage shouldn’t have made much of a difference, since the AI tool was already prohibited on homework and take-home exams. 

Students, on the other hand, seemed gravely concerned. When the blackout was first reported, numerous screams were heard on Abele Quad, coming largely from the Social Sciences Building and Perkins Library. Particularly hard-hit was Econ 204, an econometrics class which saw a decrease of 55 percentage points in the average grade on its most recent homework assignment.

“Yeah, we’re pretty much hosed,” sophomore Econ major Fin Ancebro told The Chomicle. “If any professors are reading this, I don’t use ShatGPT. If there aren’t any professors around, then yeah I haven’t done a homework assignment since my senior year of high school, and it’s getting bad.”

Grades quickly returned to normal levels after the platform’s functionality was restored. Now that all the hullabaloo is over, Spice said he is excited to pivot to other, more pressing issues. Particularly, he wants to focus on “life or death” concerns.

“We need more alumni donations,” Spice said. “Please give us your money or else we will all die.”

Editor's Note: Happy April Fools' Day! In case you couldn't tell, this was a story for our satirical edition, The Chomicle. Check out more Chomicle stories here, guaranteed to make you laugh, or at least cry.