Flunking out for Jesus: University of Oklahoma scandal
The full essay and responses; and a TA whose life was just turned upside down.
Catch up: A junior at the University of Oklahoma claimed she received a 0/25 grade on her psychology course assignment because she argued for “Christian beliefs.” The far-right mediasphere is eating it up, and the story has gained national attention due to the swift and misguided decision to suspend the TA who graded the paper. The student claims to have filed a “discrimination on religious grounds” complaint after she failed the assignment.
The assignment: Write a 650-word essay on this article “demonstrating that you read the assigned article, and include a thoughtful reaction to the material presented in the article. The best reaction papers illustrate that students have read the assigned materials and engaged in critical thinking about some aspect of the article.” This assignment was made to an upper-level psychology course and students had six weeks to complete it.
The grading rubric, as provided by the student herself:
Does the paper show a clear tie-in to the assigned article? (10 points)
Does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary? (10 points)
Is the paper clearly written? (5 points)
The student: Samantha Fulnecky, allegedly in her third year at the University of Oklahoma, claimed online that she received a 0/25 on the assignment because of her “religious views.” Turning Point USA, a hate group run on college campuses across America, amplified that message, even posting the full essay online, in addition to the TA and instructor’s responses.
The full essay: Below is the complete, unedited, unaltered essay that the student herself shared. Again, I emphasize that I made no changes in any way to this essay. It is reflected here exactly how the student claims she submitted it. There are no missing pages or sections (student did not include citations).
This article was very thought provoking and caused me to thoroughly evaluate the idea of gender and the role it plays in our society. The article discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms. I do not necessarily see this as a problem. God made male and female and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose. God is very intentional with what He makes, and I believe trying to change that would only do more harm. Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered “stereotypes”. Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind.
It is 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. I think that is a cowardly and insincere way to live. It is important to use the freedom of speech we have been given in this country, and I personally believe that eliminating gender in our society would be detrimental, as it pulls us farther from God’s original plan for humans. It is perfectly normal for kids to follow gender “stereotypes” because that is how God made us. 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. In Genesis, God says that it is not good for man to be alone, so He created a helper for man (which is a woman).
Many people assume the word “helper” in this context to be condescending and offensive to women. However, the original word in Hebrew is “ezer kenegdo” and that directly translates to “helper equal to”. Additionally, God describes Himself in the Bible using “ezer kenegdo”, or “helper”, and He describes His Holy Spirit as our Helper as well. This shows the importance God places on the role of the helper (women’s roles). God does not view women as less significant than men. He created us with such intentionality and care and He made women in his image of being a helper, and in the image of His beauty. If leaning into that role means I am “following gender stereotypes” then I am happy to be following a stereotype that aligns with the gifts and abilities God gave me as a woman.
I do not think men and women are pressured to be more masculine or feminine. I strongly disagree with the idea from the article that encouraging acceptance of diverse gender expressions could improve students’ confidence. 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. I do not want kids to be teased or bullied in school. However, pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth and everyone can do whatever they want and be whoever they want is not biblical whatsoever. The Bible says that our lives are not our own but that our lives and bodies belong to the Lord for His glory. I live my life based on this truth and firmly believe that there would be less gender issues and insecurities in children if they were raised knowing that they do not belong to themselves, but they belong to the Lord.
Overall, reading articles such as this one encourage me to one day raise my children knowing that they have a Heavenly Father who loves them and cherishes them deeply and that having their identity firmly rooted in who He is will give them the satisfaction and acceptance that the world can never provide for them. My prayer for the world and specifically for American society and youth is that they 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. I pray that they feel God’s love and acceptance as who He originally created them to be.
I was a TA when I was doing my doctoral studies at Florida State. Back then (2016-2018), we didn’t have to worry about ChatGPT so writing essays was one of the best ways to see if a student did the work and understood the materials. It also helped them learn to write, and I was thorough in reviewing essays to help them improve.
I was an earth science and journalism double major for both my BA at Syracuse University and MS at Louisiana State University, and taught earth science to hundreds of students (freshman thru seniors) at FSU.
If I gave an assignment asking my students to write a 650-word essay explaining the formation of the Earth based on peer-reviewed articles I provided, and a student turned in 750 words of the most poorly written, uncited drivel I’ve ever read that not only showed zero evidence the student did the reading, but claimed that God created the earth in six days and radiocarbon dating is a lie and the Earth is really only 6,000 years old because the Bible says so, I too would fail this student.
At no point does this student demonstrate they’ve read the article, much less engaged in critical thinking about its content. The article isn’t about “using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms.” The article is about how:
Gender-typical adolescents were more popular among peers
The link between gender typically is moderated by gender — meaning the strength and nature of the effect differs by gender
More negative mental health outcomes were associated with boys who were less gender typical
Negative health incomes included depression, and self-esteem and body-image problems
The authors argue that it’s not simply a matter of “feeling gender atypical” causing distress — rather the social consequences (teasing, exclusion, peer rejection) of being gender-atypical help drive mental-health harm.
The student fails to address any of the content of the article itself. The point of the article, if boiled down to its simplest parts, is about how the negative mental health impacts of these behaviors impact students. The student here writes, “I do not think men and women are pressured to be more masculine or feminine.” However, she does not provide a critique of the article’s methods, or even acknowledge them, to refute this claim and has no other evidence whatsoever to support her argument.
If we re-examine the grading rubric, it’s clear the student deserved 0 points.
Does the paper show a clear tie-in to the assigned article? No. There is no evidence that the student read the article, much less critically thought about it, or tied the article to her own arguments in any way, shape or form
Does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary? No. No works cited, no empirical foundation, does not engage with the material, does not understand the key points of the material, does not connect the material to any analysis.
Is the paper clearly written? If I could give negative points in this section, I would.
The student reached out to her TA about the grade who explained her reasoning.
According to the messages published by the far-right hate group Turning Point USA, the TA responded:
“Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point for you 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, and is at times offensive.
While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs, 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, 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.
You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial (it is perfectly fine to believe this), but to then say that everyone should act the same, while also saying that people aren’t pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory, especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in gender-stereotypical ways.
You can say that strict gender norms don’t create gender stereotypes, but that isn’t true by definition of what a stereotype is. Please note that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation, a nuance this article discusses.
Additionally, to call an entire group of people “demonic” is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but this isn’t a vague narrative of “society pushes lies,” but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved. You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn’t change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed.
I implore you apply some more perspective and empathy in your work. If you personally disagree with the findings, then by all means share your criticisms, but make sure to do so in a way that is appropriate and using the methodology of empirical psychology, as aligned with the learning goals in this class. If you have any additional questions or concerns about this or would like some additional educational resources, I would be happy to discuss this further and provide you with them.”
When that didn’t satisfy the student, she went above the TA’s head and complained to the instructor, who agreed with the TA’s assessment and reasoning.
The instructor told the student:
“Samantha, I am the other instructor for this course, and I have also taken the time to read your paper. I concur with Mel on the grade you received. This paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment.
Everyone has different ways in which they see the world, but in an academic course such as this you are being asked to support your ideas with empirical evidence and higher-level reasoning.
I find it concerning that you state at the beginning of your paper that you do not think bullying (“teasing”) is a bad thing. In addition, your paper directly and harshly criticizes your peers and their opinions, which are just as valuable as yours. Disagreeing with others is fine, but there is a respectful way to go about it. That goes for discussion posts as well as reaction papers.
Please employ more thoughtfulness in your future assignments.”
When that didn’t work, she went to the department head, who also agreed. And when that didn’t work, she turned to conservative media. The social media attack dogs were unleashed, and the more mainstream (e.g. FOX) conservative news picked it up from there.
What would otherwise be an unremarkable event of a college student failing an assignment because they failed to actually do the assignment became fodder for those who don’t understand the spectrum of gender expression.
Gender atypicality includes boys who play with barbies and girls who play with trucks, reflections of society’s stereotypical gender roles. Or boys who have long hair vs girls who have short hair. If the student had read the article, she would know that boys are more likely to be socially penalized than girls. Yet, 3/4 of her essay focused on women and why they must conform to gender roles. At no point does she cite any of the very real mental health issues accompanying these behaviors — which was the main point of the paper (in a psychology course). The student also repeatedly referred to the subjects as “men and women," even though the study was of middle-schoolers. Children.
Now, the University of Oklahoma has suspended the TA, handed the course over to another professor, and the student gets a passing grade.
And this is how it happens now: not with debate in a classroom or scholarship in a library, but with a screenshot hurled into the algorithmic void. What should have lived and died as a routine lesson in a psychology course — a student assignment missed, a grade explained, a teachable moment offered with care — is instead fed into the machinery of a movement that thrives on grievance the way wildfires thrive on wind. The moment the university bowed to that pressure, suspending a graduate student for doing the most basic part of their job, it signaled something far larger and far more haunting: that expertise is negotiable, that the truth of a syllabus can be rewritten by whoever shouts the loudest online.
There is a long American tradition of trying to intimidate teachers into silence. But we have entered a new phase, one in which the mob doesn’t need torches or petitions — only Wifi. A single misrepresented assignment can grow, vine-like, across social media until it strangles the very institution where it sprouted. It is the familiar story of the moral panic, retold on a platform built for speed rather than understanding. And universities, those fragile sanctuaries of curiosity, seem increasingly willing to drop their shields the moment the noise grows too loud.
What’s happening at the University of Oklahoma feels less like an isolated overreaction and more like a warning shot. If a graduate TA — an apprentice scholar, a worker barely above the poverty line — can be publicly punished for following a rubric, what happens the next time a professor teaches climate science, or the history of fascism, or the documented mental-health impacts of gender discrimination? What happens when ideologically aligned organizations realize that a single viral post can bend a public university to their will? We are watching, in real time, the erosion of the university’s backbone and the slow collapse of the idea that evidence matters more than outrage.
A campus is supposed to be a place where ideas are tested, not where faculty and graduate students are tested for ideological purity. When administrators capitulate to political anger from outside the classroom, they tell every scholar — especially the most vulnerable — that their safety is contingent, their authority revocable, their expertise negotiable. They tell students that if they dislike a grade badly enough, they can summon an audience large enough to overturn it. And they tell the loudest, angriest corners of the internet that the gates are unguarded.
We’ve seen what happens in the natural world when boundaries collapse — when wetlands stop buffering storms or forests stop absorbing heat. The damage spreads quickly, and recovery is slow. Universities are no different. Once they begin reshaping themselves around the demands of those who misread, misrepresent, or simply reject the material being taught, the harm radiates outward. It chills inquiry. It punishes accuracy. It replaces education with spectacle.
The student in this case will move on. The far-right machine will find its next target. But the TA — the one who read the assignment, applied the rubric, explained the grade with care, and trusted the university to defend academic integrity — is left to weather a storm that should never have been allowed to make landfall. The tragedy isn’t merely that she was hung out to dry; it’s that institutions built to withstand political winds are now bending toward them.
If universities continue to cede ground to online outrage mobs, they will soon discover they have no ground left to stand on. And the cost will not be measured in a single failing grade overturned, but in the quiet, accumulating toll of scholars who stop teaching honestly because honesty has become the most dangerous job on campus.
I’ve spoken to faculty at UO and reached out to offer my support to this TA, who is now dealing with a sudden, disorienting, life-changing circus of madness because of this. If I get any information about how you can support them, I will send out a second piece.
It’s Giving Tuesday!
Money is tight for most Americans because of the damage done to our economy this year. Make every dollar count by donating to one of these academic, advocacy or aide groups today (many are matching funds so hurry!):
In my field:
American Meteorological Society: https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/donations/?_zs=MQbxn1&_zl=wCpTA
American Association of Geographers:
https://www.aag.org/make-a-difference/?_zs=t0cLk1&_zl=vroTA
American Geophysical Union:
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Sierra Club: https://giving.sierraclub.org/page/91233/donate
Environmental Defense Fund:
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Help whistleblowers:
Whistleblowers of America:
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National Whistleblower Center:
https://nationalwhistleblowercenter.salsalabs.org/givingtuesday2025/index.html
Government Accountability Project:
https://crm.whistleblower.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=2
Global Aid/Advocacy:
Doctors Without Borders:
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Save the children:
https://www.savethechildren.org/us/where-we-work/west-bank-gaza
Well said, RJ.
It seems the student thinks she deserves a pass for being a Christian. Does she believe that a student who is self-described heathen deserves a pass for writing a scathing criticism of the Christian text, reversing Satan or the "principal of darkness" for the "principal of light" Or a student who recites Hitler in place of Jesus?