The University of Oklahoma assured a student that her final grade won’t be affected by the zero she got for an essay on gender, a score that prompted religious discrimination allegations and inflamed the heated cultural debate on American college campuses.
The university announced Sunday that the instructor had been placed on administrative leave and promised to investigate the incident, urged on by the state’s governor. OU’s Turning Point USA chapter posted on social media about the essay, triggering 44 million page views by Wednesday and online debates over religion, gender, freedom of speech and academic standards.
On Wednesday, university officials said that two assignments the student had questioned would not count toward her final grade in the course.
The student, Samantha Fulnecky, was assigned to write a 650-word essay as part of a psychology course analyzing an article on the experience of gender, peer relations and mental health. In her essay, she rejected the concept of multiple genders and cited the Bible to support her view that traditional gender roles should not be considered stereotypes.
“Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth,” Fulnecky wrote.
She added that she hoped young people in the United States “would not believe the lies being spread from Satan that make them believe they are better off as another gender than what God made them.”
The University of Oklahoma chapter of Turning Point USA posted the essay — for which Fulnecky received a score of zero out of 25 — on social media on Nov. 27 as well as what the group claimed was the graduate student instructor’s response. The Oklahoman also ran the essay in full.
In screenshots shared by the conservative group, graduate student instructor Mel Curth apparently wrote that while Fulnecky was entitled to her beliefs, using them to argue against the article’s findings “is not best practice.”
According to the screenshots on social media, Curth wrote that the essay’s failing grade was not based on Fulnecky’s beliefs but because the paper “does not answer the questions for the assignment, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.”
Curth wrote in an email Wednesday that her lawyer had advised her not to make public statements about the situation at this time. The email signature noted Curth uses she/they pronouns.
Fulnecky could not be immediately reached for comment.
“The University of Oklahoma takes seriously concerns involving First Amendment rights, certainly including religious freedoms,” an OU spokesperson wrote in an email Wednesday. “Upon receiving notice from the student on the grading of an assignment in the online class, the University immediately reached out to the student, began a full review of the situation, and acted swiftly to address the matter.”
Officials also said the university is reviewing the claims of religious discrimination, that a graduate student instructor remains on leave during that review, and a professor is leading the course for the rest of the semester.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) cast the University of Oklahoma matter as an issue of First Amendment rights. “I’m calling on the OU regents to review the results of the investigation & ensure other students aren’t unfairly penalized for their beliefs,” he wrote on social media this week.
On his first day in office this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. recognizes “two sexes, male and female” Since then, Trump has pressured schools and colleges to not recognize transgender people.
Republican leaders have in recent years stepped up a campaign to shape American higher education, with a particular focus on cultural issues such as gender identity, diversity efforts and antisemitism. On Wednesday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon took part in a White House event called “Biased Professors, Woke Administrators, and the End of Free Inquiry on U.S. Campuses,” which convened university and political leaders to discuss leftist “ideological capture” of higher education and recent actions to correct that.
Critics have argued those moves undermine academic freedom.
“An instructor’s freedom to teach includes the right to assess student academic performance,” Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in an email, adding that the AAUP is unaware of any other cases where an instructor was reprimanded in this way for providing feedback while grading.
He called the incident “an egregious violation” of academic freedom and due process. “We are gravely concerned that a climate of escalating authoritarian assaults on academic freedom is normalizing politicized interference in classroom teaching and learning,” Wolfson said.
In September, Texas A&M University fired an instructor and removed a dean and department head after a viral video circulated of a student accusing an instructor of illegally teaching “gender ideology.” The university’s president stepped down days later. In November, a university committee ruled that the professor’s firing was unjustified.
The post Oklahoma college student’s failing grade on gender essay dropped amid outcry appeared first on Washington Post.
