University of Oklahoma (OU) students are demonstrating in solidarity with a transgender graduate student who was suspended from their role as teaching assistant for a psychology class over a student’s dubious claims that she received a failing grade due to her Christian beliefs.
The assignment in question was supposed to be a reaction to an academic article on gender. But the paper written by junior Samantha Fulnecky failed to provide empirical evidence or even citations for her own beliefs, resulting in her failing grade.
The essay was turned in on November 9. The teaching assistant — whose name Truthout is withholding due to privacy and harassment concerns — gave Fulnecky a 0 out of 25 points, stating that the student’s editorializing was not accompanied by an evidence-based approach.
Students in the class were asked to review a paper entitled “Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health: A Study on Adolescents.” According to the paper’s abstract, the study examines “whether being high in gender typicality is associated with popularity, whether being low in gender typicality is associated with rejection/teasing, and whether teasing due to low gender typicality mediates the association with negative mental health.”
Fulnecky’s response included minimal reference to the paper, except to criticize gender nonconformity from her religious perspective. Fulnecky also made errant claims about the paper’s intent, asserting that eliminating “gender,” in general, would separate people “from God’s original plan for humans,” despite the paper making no calls for such action.
The OU student also expressed disagreement with the concept of teasing leading to higher rates of depression among gender nonconforming teenagers.
“The article discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms. I do not necessarily see this as a problem,” Fulnecky wrote. “God made male and female and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose.”
Fulnecky’s religious beliefs were apparently her only talking point in refuting the paper at hand.
“Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts,” she wrote. “The same goes for men.”
“The reason so many girls want to feel womanly and care for others in a motherly way is not because they feel pressured to fit into social norms. It is because God created and chose them to reflect His beauty and His compassion in that way,” she wrote in another excerpt.
Fulnecky also complained about “society pushing” a belief that “there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever,” calling that concept “demonic.”
At no point in Fulnecky’s paper does she provide empirical evidence for her claims, nor does she reference the biblical passages on which her ideas are supposedly based.
The teaching assistant gave Fulnecky’s paper a failing grade, noting that the deducted points were due to her “posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class.”
The grad student also made one statement that right-wing influencers defending Fulnecky have latched onto — “To call an entire group of people ‘demonic’ is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population,” the teaching assistant wrote.
Fulnecky appealed the grade back to the teaching assistant. In response to that appeal, the assistant expanded on their explanation of the grade, writing:
You do not need empirical evidence when writing a reaction paper, but if your reaction paper argues contrary to not only the article, but the consensus of multiple academic fields (psychology, biology, sociology, etc.), then you should either provide empirical support for those claims or raise criticisms that are testable via psychological research. If you took a geology class and argued that the earth was flat, something contrary to the academic consensus of that field, they you would be asked to provide evidence of such, not just personal ideology.
Fulnecky then took her complaints to OU President Joe Harroz, and reached out to news outlets and the far right Teacher Freedom Alliance. The OU chapter of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) also shared her story, resulting in it going viral in right-wing circles.
Following outrage from right-wing influencers and politicians in the state, OU announced on November 30 that it would be suspending the grad student from teaching assistant duties indefinitely, pending the outcome of an internal investigation on their grading of Fulnecky. The university has also decided not to count the paper toward her final semester grade.
In response to the teaching assistant’s ongoing suspension over what appears to be a fair grade, students at OU have planned a protest at the campus for Friday at noon.
The OU Graduate Student Senate also passed a resolution on Thursday night condemning the university’s actions and calling for the graduate student to be reinstated as a teaching assistant in the class.
“In making this appeal to the University’s administration, (the Graduate Student Senate) stands in solidarity with the graduate student instructor and will continue to advocate for their rights, their safety, and their wellbeing,” read the resolution, which also called for a formal apology to the graduate student.
While GSS fully supports the First Amendment rights of all students to believe, worship, and practice their religion in accordance with their personal convictions and to exercise their freedom of speech, this does not entitle any student to a certain grade on an assignment. Regardless of a student’s individual beliefs, they are required to submit assignments that respond to the assigned prompts and that follow the provided rubrics.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has also sent a letter to OU.
“The student was not persecuted for her faith. She was penalized for not properly completing the assignment,” the letter from FFRF’s legal counsel said. “Academic standards aren’t anti-Christian.”
“This response from the university sends a chilling message: that academic standards may be suspended when a student invokes personal religious belief, and that instructors may face punishment for applying those standards even-handedly when it results in a bad grade for a religious person,” FFRF added, demanding that the teaching assistant be reinstated.
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