The University of Oklahoma on Monday removed an instructor who gave a student a failing grade on a gender essay last month, in an incident that had prompted debates over religious, gender and academic freedoms.
The student, Samantha Fulnecky, received a zero for an essay in which she rejected the concept of multiple genders and cited the Bible to support her view that traditional gender roles should not be considered stereotypes.
She filed a religious discrimination allegation with the university, which drew national attention after it was posted on social media by the university’s Turning Point USA chapter. UO later told Fulnecky her final grade would not be affected by the score on that essay.
In a statement Monday, the university said it had determined that the graduate teaching assistant involved “was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper,” based on an examination of the instructor’s prior grading standards and patterns and their statements on the matter. “The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the University,” it said in the statement.
UO added that it will not release the findings of the religious discrimination allegation filed by the student. The university did not immediately respond to request for comments.
The instructor, Mel Curth, who identifies as transgender, shared a statement from their attorney via email.
“Ms. Curth continues to deny that she engaged in any arbitrary behavior regarding the student’s work, and is considering all of her legal remedies, including appealing this decision by the university,” Brittany M. Stewart said in the statement.
The essay, part of a psychology course, involved analyzing an article on the experience of gender, peer relations and mental health.
“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.” Fulnecky did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In screenshots shared online by the university’s Turning Point chapter, Curth apparently wrote that 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.”
Immediately after returning to office this year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring that the U.S. recognizes “two sexes, male and female” — definitions that are oversimplified and inaccurate, according to experts and a significant body of academic research, The Washington Post has reported. Since then, Trump has pressured schools and colleges to not recognize transgender people.
Gender has become a flash point at other campuses too. Texas A&M University fired an instructor in September after a viral video circulated of a student accusing an instructor of illegally teaching “gender ideology.” The university’s president stepped down days later, with a university committee later ruling that the professor’s firing was unjustified.
Susan Svrluga contributed to this report.
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