No Heroes in the Oklahoma Grading Controversy

A transgender-identifying instructor at the University of Oklahoma gave a failing grade to a student’s subpar paper that defended Christian views and characterized the “lie that there are multiple genders” as “demonic.” Now, it is a national news story about discrimination against conservatives and Christians on college campuses.

The teacher, William “Mel” Curth, is a graduate student in psychology who prefers “she/they” pronouns; he has been placed on administrative leave while the school conducts an investigation. The undergraduate student, Samantha Fulnecky, has been hailed as a brave campus warrior advancing the proper mission of a university, namely the pursuit of truth despite discomfort. In fact, state representative Gabe Woolley announced that Fulnecky was honored with a Citation of Recognition from the Oklahoma House of Representatives’ 98th District for “speaking from a foundation of truth.” Yet nobody involved in this episode deserves much praise, let alone an award, and this supposedly serious incident might actually be nothing more than an unpleasant encounter between a harsh grader and a student.

The assignment in question was described to the psychology class as a “reaction paper.” The instructions state that the best of these submissions would “illustrate that students have read the assigned materials and engaged in critical thinking about some aspect of the article.” In university lingo, a “reaction paper” (sometimes referred to as a “response paper”) is not expected to be a full-length essay that draws from a wide variety of sources. Instead, it is functionally a blog post wherein a student proves to have understood the reading. Teachers find these useful because it shows what students learned, what they had difficulty grasping, and what important insights from the scholarship were overlooked, all of which help guide in-class discussions. The grading rubric for Fulnecky’s paper is consistent with the notion that the submissions were not expected to be rigorous essays that synthesize complex ideas. According to photos shared by a Turning Point USA chapter, the assignment was graded as follows: “1) Does the paper show a clear tie-in to the assigned article? (10 points), 2) Does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary? (10 points), 3) Is the paper clearly written? (5 points)”

Admittedly, these are low standards — yet, if I may play pretend as an instructor, the student didn’t meet them. Her reaction paper, which was shared by a Turning Point USA chapter and can be read here, did not follow the guidelines. Fulnecky writes that “the article discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms,” which merely describes the general topic of the assigned reading; she does not clarify what stance(s) the authors defended, leaving a teacher to wonder if she understood the reading. Instead of engaging directly with the assigned material, Fulnecky segued into a rambling discussion of God’s design for men and women. She seems to disagree with the progressive notion of “gender,” but unfortunately, the paper is so terribly written that it is difficult to discern what she is attempting to argue. Her implicit thesis is something along the lines of “men and women were created as distinct categories,” and most of Fulnecky’s sentences present some variation of “this thing happens because of God and therefore is good.” (She doesn’t cite specific Bible passages.)

Somewhat ironically, the prose and reasoning are so poor that she inadvertently makes claims that could be construed as endorsing transgenderism. For instance, she wrote that “women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts.” Putting aside the vagueness of “womanly things” and the circular logic, Fulnecky is just a short step away from the activists’ argument that “someone who feels like a woman is therefore a woman.” If I were the teacher, I would either give the paper a zero, or maybe I would award a few points if it followed the formatting guidelines and was submitted by the deadline.

And Fulnecky did receive a zero — but possibly for the wrong reasons. Curth’s evaluation, also shared online by the Turning Point USA chapter, begins by insisting that the bad score has nothing to do with Fulnecky expressing “certain beliefs.” Instead, Curth claims the grade is warranted because the essay is internally contradictory, relies on personal ideology rather than empirical evidence, and ignores the questions posed in the assignment. But then, Curth notes that Fulnecky’s paper “is at times offensive,” and he further warns against making “highly offensive” comments about “minoritized groups.” Couple these remarks with the information that Curth likes to be referred to with “she” or “they,” and there are reasons to suspect Fulnecky might have been uniquely punished for expressing right-leaning views.

An entertaining but unaddressed irony in this debacle is that, while Curth is right that Fulnecky’s paper is a mess, Curth’s prose is also unintelligible. Curth writes to Fulnecky, “I implore you apply some more perspective and empathy in your work.” But how do you “apply” “perspective,” and how can a single person have “more perspective” if “perspective” doesn’t exist in degrees? Indeed, Curth’s response is riddled with perplexing phrases, such as the claim that “acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation.” This leaves me to wonder, how does “acknowledging” something “denote” any type of “connotation,” under any circumstances? The teacher also stated that “You can say that strict gender norms don’t create gender stereotypes, but that isn’t true by definition of what a stereotype is.” Yet a “stereotype” is not defined as “something created by norms,” and Curth is assuming that norms cause generalizations about human groups. In other words, Curth — like Fulnecky — demonstrates circular reasoning by claiming something like “strict gender norms create stereotypes because stereotypes by definition are created by strict norms.”

Lastly, just as Fulnecky appealed to God and the Bible, Curth similarly appeals to authority by insisting 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.” Of course, even if major medical associations agree a particular statement is true, that doesn’t make the statement true. So, if Fulnecky is looking to improve her essays, it would behoove her to seek guidance from an instructor other than Curth; they both seem to be unskilled writers, but Curth has memorized some extra verbs to sound clever.

Fulnecky wrote a bad essay that got a bad grade, but the justification supplied for that grade seems to hint at political, religious, or ideological discrimination rather than academic standards to measure a paper’s quality. Honestly, I wonder if a paper nearly identical to Fulnecky’s that instead draws from “indigenous knowledge” would get the same grade — and that’s ultimately the crux of the issue. There is only one relevant question that must be asked during the University of Oklahoma’s investigation of this incident: Did the instructor give out zeroes to other bad papers that did not defend a right-leaning or Christian view? If Curth also gave failing grades to equally lousy papers that either advocated for progressive views or had no discernible political leanings, then Fulnecky wouldn’t have legitimate grounds to claim she is a victim of discrimination. Plenty of conservative students are punished by professors for defending views outside of acceptable orthodoxy, but this episode in Oklahoma might just be an example of a grader prone to inflicting penalties; if that’s the case, then it serves as a good reminder that not every interpersonal dispute amounts to a battle in the culture war.