Hof-Pocrisy

I call out my alma matter, Hofstra University, on their decision last week to use an Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated video to introduce a new logo for their Athletics department, when the university has been very publicly against the use of AI in their academic work.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, So I've been meaning to talk about this
ever since it happened last week the new Hofstra Pride
logo revealed. Just getting straight to the point there, So
last week June ninth, Hostro Athletics unveiled their new logo
and it coincided with the university's new logo, which was
unveiled a short time before this. Now, even though I
personally think the new logo is very very simplistic and

(00:22):
reminds me more of a Christian ministry if anything, that's
not what I'm here to talk about today. If it was,
this would pretty much be the end of the podcast
right now. You'd be probably hearing an ad after that,
and you'd be on your merry way to go play
Fortnite or do whatever it is. But then a little
while after the university unveiled their new logo, Hofstra Pride

(00:43):
Athletics rebranded too. Now, straight off the bat, I personally
think it's a little bit minimalistic compared to what they
used to have. Like the logo is literally just two
lions heads and then Hofstra Athletics in a very generic
X at the bottom. Now, previously you had a head
of a lion roaring, and it blended imperfectly with the

(01:06):
Hofstra Pride text, Hafster Athletics text. It all blended in
very well, and a lot of people were a fan
of that. I still have a lot of Hafshra Pride
merged myself, which unfortunately is no longer a current thing,
but hey, it is what it is. Athletic programs rebrand
all the time, but at least a lot of other
athletic programs aren't using fucking AI to unveil their new logo, Like,

(01:31):
come on, what are we doing here? Yeah, so Hafstro
Athletics they used AI for their new logo reveal. And
if there's one thing that I love about the Hofstra community,
it's how much they have really banded together to be
so against this. Like, if you go into the comments
section of this new reveal, about ninety eight percent of

(01:56):
it is all negative comments about them using AI. It's
it's just so crazy how united they are against this. Now,
this video that they put out on Hopster Pride Socials,
it starts with a Pride of Lions coming out of
a football tunnel, or at least what looks like a
football tunnel. Turns out to be a soccer stadium, but

(02:16):
a lot of people thought it was in an American
football stadium. Keep in mind, Hofstra has not had a
football program since the first Obama term, so naturally had
a lot of people upset right off the bat, like, oh,
why are you having this setting in a football stadium
when Hobstro won doesn't even have the program. And number two,
when Hobstra will never ever ever bring back the football program.

(02:39):
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but that's just never
gonna happen as much as I wanted to. Now, this
video continues with the Pride of Lions running over the
center pitch, and I will give them credit for this.
I do respect the stony Brook jab There one of
the Lions picks up a stony Brook jersey. It just

(03:01):
starts to chew away at it, being that Stonybrook is
probably the biggest Coastal Athletic Association rival to HOFSHRA. Right now,
was almost gonna say colonial because that's how it was
when I was at the school, and it's still gonna
be the colonial to be, but no, they switched it
to Coastal coinciding with the new schools that they edited
the conference, including Stonybrook, so you got the new Long

(03:21):
Island rivalry going on there. And even though I do
like Stonybrook, I also do like the diss But that's
about the only positive that I have for the rest
of the video. Like, go watch it if you have
the chance. You can just obviously tell that it was
AI generated. And it's just a huge slap in the
face to all the current students that attend Hofstra. It's

(03:44):
really just a slap in the face to everybody associated
with the university, Like it's a big giant go fuck
yourself to all the creative artists that you have at
that university, all the creative artists that have graduated from
your university. Like you invest millions upon millions upon millions
of dollars every year in your creative art schools, whether

(04:07):
it's communications art. You have a lot of creative talent
that are proud to call themselves a member of the
Hofsher family, and you make five million dollars a year
mostly off tuition alone. A lot of that also has
to do with alumni donations, but a big part of
it is far and away the tuition costs. And then

(04:27):
the best they can do is artificial intelligence in a
time when the AI crisis, if you will, Among those
that work in creative fields, you have a lot of
AI generated content that's out there, a lot of AI voices,
whether it's voicing, imaging for radio shows, voicing promos, stuff

(04:49):
like that. And you think it's bad now, It's only
going to get worse from here because people are only
going to get lazier and AIS presence when it comes
to generating designs and media. Its presence is only going
to get bigger from here on out. And I know
what some of you might say, You know, it's not
really that deep. It's just a logo reveal. You know

(05:11):
why is everybody so up in arms about this? And
that's for a very simple reason. It's because Hofstra's just
showing that there are a bunch of hypocrites by using AI. Yes,
they are hypocrites. And you know why, Well, it goes
back to my time as a student. And you could
ask a lot of other fellow alums and current students

(05:32):
about this, especially in the recent age, they will tell
you the exact same thing. Almost every assignment, exam, anything
of importance that we had to submit online, the university
would require us to sign that we didn't use AI
in any way for any of these assignments. You know,
they're so strict about using AI in academic assignments right

(05:56):
as they turn around and use the same technology they
are basically against for their own promotional content. Hypocrisy at
its finest s right there. I'm sure if he asked
most of these creative arts students if they wanted to
be involved in this new local reveal, I'm sure most,
if not all, of them would want to jump at

(06:17):
the opportunity. This would have been a hell of a
thing to put on resumes, reels, stuff like that. But instead,
these programs continue to be very underfunded, and these opportunities
that students would probably otherwise jump at, they're not getting
the chance to because a damn robot is taking its place.
And I want to give a quick shout out to
hofstra Beef on Instagram because they provided a lot of

(06:40):
very good points about this whole situation that pretty much
everybody is in agreement with. One of the points they
brought up, Culkins Hall looks the exact same as it
did in nineteen forty as it hasn't been overly renovated,
and I've had classes in there before. It looks like
it has not been touched since my parents were newborns.
All the while, there's other niche buildings on campus getting

(07:02):
multi million dollar makeovers. And again, if Offshra asked any
of their art students to help them design this promotional
video for their new athletics logo, a lot of them
would say yeah. And President Susan Poser just complacent. I mean,
she's just sitting at the top like a fat cat,
making over half a million dollars a year just on
her salary, students selling out thousands upon thousands upon thousands

(07:26):
of dollars per semester for their skills and talents, and
they are not even utilized to the fullest potential by
the same school they're funding. I mean, if I'm an
outsider and I'm looking and I'm seeing this, I might
be questioning why the hell would I want to go
to this school, and to that, I would not even
blame you one bit. And speaking of these multi million

(07:49):
dollar makeovers, by the way, Haser recently opened a new
engineering building and it's funny because the new building was
not at all designed for engineering majors. Most of it
is designed for nursing students, And yeah, I get it
offshore as a pretty big nursing school, but you have
a dedicated building for that already, Like you have the

(08:10):
north Welles School of Medicine on the other side of
campus where the Jets used to practice. You can fully
use that, But yet eighty five percent of that is
set aside for nursing, ten percent is for computer science,
and the rest is engineering. So if you're looking at
it percentage wise, that's only about five ten percent of
the building that's actually being used for engineering. Kind of

(08:33):
crazy how that one works out there. And on top
of that, you have a lot of professors that have
submitted complaints about the new building and how she having
a few classes in it doesn't fix the fact that
most of the engineering majors at the school are still
stuck in Weed and Adam Hall's older buildings on campus.
Like you had a lot of engineering majors that came
to the school solely because of the fact that they

(08:54):
were getting a brand new building. So President Poser and
her administration just blatantly lying to its students, and I
feel bad for them. It's just a huge slap in
the face. Now I'm not mad at the engineers for this.
They have nothing to do with this at all. Like,
I get it. It's a very big university. You're bound
to have some stuff eventually be overlooked, so I get that.

(09:18):
At the same time, you still have students stuck in
the same buildings that are full of mold, full of bugs,
like the student experience just isn't great for them, and
then prioritizing AI over their students' creative talents, it just
shows that they don't really care about what their students
want as long as they're making money as all matters
to them. And I'm sure the same could be said

(09:38):
for a lot of other universities, but OFFS in particular,
they're just kind of saying the quiet part out loud
without actually saying the quiet part out loud. And I
don't expect them to change their AI policy one bit
solely because of that. I mean, this is already damaging
enough to students in and of itself. Like I'm sure
there's probably a ton of other students on campus who

(09:59):
don't do any of the homework whatsoever and they're just
fully dependent on AI, but the university doesn't really care.
They leave it completely up to the professors, and keep
in mind there's probably a good chunk of them that
are using AI for their lesson plans and just teaching
in general because the university allows it. But now they
rebrand when they don't need to, and they're gonna spend

(10:21):
money on AI instead of, you know, actually spending money
fixing the damn school. Just make it make sense. And
you know what, if this gets me some pushback from
anybody at the university, so be it. But if there's
one thing that I've learned from Hofstra about my character,
about being in the radio program and reporting on news

(10:43):
in general, I've spent a lot of years anchoring on newsline,
writing a lot of stories, doing a lot of reports,
being involved in news journalism every way that I can.
Is that you shouldn't be afraid to call things out
when you see them. That's something that I've worn on
my chest since I left that place and ventured into
the real world. And you know what, if that means

(11:04):
calling out the same school that I tended and got
my degree from, so be it. But either way, it's
just kind of a sad time to be an alumni
of the Hofstra Pride seeing all this go down. And
the fact that it's still up. I mean, they don't care,
they don't care what bit and they probably will never

(11:25):
take it down and leave this huge slap in the
face up. I totally expect nothing to change, and I'll
just leave you with this. You can barely accommodate the
bare minimum for a lot of your Liberal Arts students,
who again I've said this multiple times in this podcast,
that they would have jumped at the opportunity to be

(11:46):
able to work on a new logo reveal. You know
you're utilizing your student's talents to its fullest potential, but
yet you can't accommodate the bare minimum for them. Like
you have a ton of buildings on campus, whether it's Hawlkins, Monroe, Roosevelt, Mason, etc.
Which are home to many of the English, philosophy, sociology,

(12:06):
fine art departments. They're cramped with poorly ventilated classrooms, curtains
for bathroom doors, mold Monroe in particular, the tiny music
practice rooms not even being remotely sound proof, and most
of the Liberal arts classes not even being able to
fit in the Liberal Arts buildings and sent to Breslin
as a result, including many of the RTVF classes a

(12:26):
lot of which I have taken in Breslin Hall. Why
even call yourselves a liberal arts institution? And that's a
question that Hafstra will probably need to answer for in
the near future, as we all hope that they just
do better, you know, do right by your students for
once and don't keep feeding them huge slaps in the

(12:47):
face because it's just not going to improve the student
experience and it's not going to make the alums feel
sympathetic to your cause. I'm sorry, but it has to
be said, and I hope that maybe if some of
it for the U University is listening to this, that
they can encourage the people at the top to make
some better decisions for future generations of the Haftshire Pride.

(13:09):
I'm Hafshra Alumarian Pigano and this has been my perspective
on this whole situation. Just what a mess.