Did a student paper arguing for traditional gender roles and identities deserve its failing grade? Or was that mark proof of political bias, and of academe’s hostility to religious conservatives?
That debate is unspooling at the University of Oklahoma. There, Samantha Fulnecky was recently asked in a psychology course on lifespan development to respond to an academic article. In her short reaction paper, Fulnecky wrote that while the article “discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms,” she did “not necessarily see this as a problem,” according to screenshots of her paper that were posted on X by the university’s Turning Point USA chapter. That’s because “God made male and female and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose.”
Later in the paper, which referenced the Bible, Fulnecky wrote that “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.” She also said it was “frustrating to me when I read articles like this and discussion posts from my classmates of so many people trying to conform to the same mundane opinion, so they do not step on people’s toes.”
The paper could earn 25 points total, according to a screenshot of criteria posted on X. Fulnecky, who is reportedly a junior and could not be reached for an interview on Monday, told The Oklahoman that she’d been given a zero.
Why such a low mark? Her submission does not “answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive,” an instructor for the course told Fulnecky, according to screenshots of the feedback also shared by the Turning Point chapter. (The instructor, Mel Curth, a graduate student, declined an interview but confirmed a few details over email.)
The dispute is emblematic of the white-hot scrutiny over how gender issues are taught in public-college classrooms. Last month, the Texas A&M University system’s board voted to bar courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity,” unless they were approved in advance. The move came after a dust-up at Texas A&M’s flagship, where a student asserted to an instructor that course content related to gender identity violated her religious beliefs, and the student was told to leave. Video of the exchange went viral, the instructor was fired, and the university president soon resigned.
At Oklahoma, Fulnecky has filed a complaint alleging discrimination against her for her religious beliefs. “OU has a clear process for reviewing such claims and it has been activated,” the university said in a statement. On X, Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma’s Republican governor, called on OU regents to “review the results of the investigation & ensure other students aren’t unfairly penalized for their beliefs.”
The university also said that the graduate-student instructor, who is unnamed in the statement, is now on administrative leave, and a professor has taken over the course for the rest of the semester.
Whether the zero amounted to discrimination is one question. Whether it was a fair application of the grading rubric is another. On social media, academics and others have spent the past few days debating the merits of Fulnecky’s paper, with many arguing that she deserved a failing grade. Others contended that while Fulnecky’s prose might not have been stellar, her paper was a reasonable interpretation of the instructions given and not inconsistent with undergraduate writing generally.
While a lot of people on X seemed “completely shocked” by the quality of Fulnecky’s writing, “if you grade a lot of papers, it’s not at a shocking level,” said Oliver Traldi, an assistant professor at the Institute of American Constitutional Thought and Leadership at the University of Toledo. “It’s at a kind of level that, although it’s lower than what you want and certainly lower than average, it’s the sort of paper you’re used to seeing.”
Megan T. Stevenson, a professor of law and of economics at the University of Virginia, agreed. “This student’s writing is not that bad,” she said. “There’s lots of bad writing out there.”
According to the assignment rubric, only five of the possible 25 points for the 650-word paper were based on the clarity of the writing. Whether the paper demonstrated a “clear tie-in to the assigned article” was worth 10 points. And the degree to which the paper presented a “thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary” was worth another 10 points.
The assignment instructions list possible approaches students could take in their paper, including writing about “why you feel the topic is important and worthy of study (or not).” The best version will “illustrate that students have read the assigned materials and engaged in critical thinking about some aspect of the article,” it says.
In her feedback to Fulnecky, Curth insisted she was not penalizing the student for her personal beliefs but wrote that “there is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections.
“I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses,” Curth wrote, “but using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice.”
She also implored the student to “apply some more perspective and empathy in your work” and told her that calling “an entire group of people ‘demonic’ is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population.”
Curth, who is trans, confirmed to The Chronicle that she wrote those comments to the student and that she gave Fulnecky a zero.
Though Stevenson declined to say what grade she would’ve given the student, she does not think the paper deserved zero points, based on the assignment instructions, which as written do not require students to reference empirical evidence. (Stevenson emphasized that her opinion is based only on the information available online, acknowledging that there might be nonpublic context that would change her assessment.)
As for whether it seems like the instructor graded Fulnecky more harshly because of the student’s beliefs, Stevenson said, “I don’t pretend to look inside peoples’ hearts and minds.”
Traldi said it’s not possible to know without more information. He added that “nobody would read this and be like, ‘Well this is such stunning work. I can’t imagine anybody failing it.’”
Stevenson also said in a follow-up email that graduate students generally “get very little training in how to teach. They are just thrown in there and expected to figure it out. Meanwhile, students come in with varying amounts of knowledge about norms and expectations in academia. That makes it extra important to be really clear about what the grading expectations are,” she wrote. “This may not be obvious to a new teacher — it certainly took me a few years to understand it.”
Regan A. R. Gurung, a professor of psychology at Oregon State University, does not think the student did a good job fulfilling the assignment criteria of demonstrating a “clear tie-in” to the assigned reading. He also thinks it’s possible the instructor articulated certain expectations, like using academic citations or engaging with empirical evidence, during class. But he, like Stevenson, thinks a zero is too low a grade. “If one of my students, or one of my kids in college, came to me and said, ‘I got a zero on this assignment,’” he’d tell them to “politely ask for a reevaluation,” he said. “Because using that rubric — it’s not a zero.”
That re-evaluation seems to have happened. The university said in a statement that “a formal grade appeals process was conducted” and it “resulted in steps to ensure no academic harm to the student from the graded assignments.”
The statement did not satisfy Fulnecky, who shared it in an Instagram story. “If this situation was regarding any other religion, I’m sure President [Joseph] Harroz [Jr.] would apologize to them personally on behalf of the university and would assure them they wouldn’t let this happen again,” she wrote. “But when it comes to Christianity, they’ll only act apologetic when they’re faced with social media backlash.”
