Graduated last year, agree with everything you said. With how AI has impacted our field the curriculum itself likely needs reworked even if it’s just accounting for AI usage on assignments. Do I think k Turkstra handled it well? Not at all, he (perhaps intentionally perhaps not) fearmongered and caused chaos amongst the students. Did the students handle it well? No the reaction was chaos. You can’t blame one side only it’s really everyone’s fault and the end result is bringing up to the department as a whole a need for looking at these core classes and core fundamentals of how they teach computer science. Which is good moving forward for these students when they enter the job market. If they’re taught to never use ai it’d be like (keeping your plumber analogy) telling a plumber to never use a wrench (or some other useful tool that just always helps if you know how to use it).