OK: OU Earns Failing Grade

Oklahoma’s right wing governor Kevin Stitt calls the situation “deeply concerning" and we certainly agree on that but probably not on why.

University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky didn't do the reading and tried to bullshit her way through the assignment. Or maybe she was just trolling in attempt to follow in her activist mom's footsteps, so that she could get a trans teaching assistant in trouble. 

Kristi Fulnecky is an attorney who has, among other things, defended two January 6 insurrectionists. She's a right wing podcaster who served in politics, including a stint in combat with local government when they went after her for taxes owed because she operated a business without a license; just a political witch hunt, she claimed. During the height of the pandemic, she sued over mask mandates and sued Springfield Public Schools over their hybrid re-opening plan. As a local councilwoman, she regularly blocked anyone who corrected her. She apparently is also good at threatening legal-ish letters.

In other words, Mom has fully mastered the art of aggressive victimhood.

Fulnecky was supposed to read a paper about a study that looked at the connection between "gender typicality" and popularity in middle school students. In an assignment familiar to most teachers, she was to respond to the article in a way that demonstrated that she had actually read it. 

She did not.

Instead, she unleashed a rant about the Bible and transexuality. Many critics have argued that she cites no sources, and I'm not sure that's an issue for this kind of paper. However, the essay does not include anything that would allow one to correctly guess what she was responding to-- in other words, no signs that she had done the reading and was responding directly to it. 

Instructor Mel Curth gave her a zero. Unfortunately, Curth also took the bait. A simple, "This does not meet the requirements of the assignment" would have sufficed, but Curth challenged Fulnecky's assertion that gender is binary and fixed, and urged Fulnecky to show more empathy. Not saying Curth was wrong, but her extensive response gave Fulnecky raw materials for some oppression theater.

Couple of details to note. The assignment was worth 3% of the course grade, so not a make or break thing. And Fulnecky did not work her protest through the usual academic channels, but went straight to the right wing outrage machine, calling in the OU Turning Point USA chapter and former baloney peddler and edu-dude Ryan Walters. They also took the bait and put the outrage machine right in gear.

 

Said the TPUSA at OU chapter on line, “We should not be letting mentally ill professors around students.” Walters unleashed a giant pile of bullshit on Twitter

Samantha Fulnecky is an American hero. She stood firm in her faith despite the radical attacks from the Marxist professors at the University of Oklahoma. The OU staff involved should be immediately fired and OU should not be receiving taxpayer dollars if they continue their assaults on faith. The war on Christianity is real, and we will not be silenced.

Other instructors backed up Curth's judgment, but the University folded like a wine-soaked paper bag, posting its statement on Twitter, just in case you were wondering to whom they feel answerable. They had already canceled the grade, removing any accountability for Fulnecky. Now they've decided that Curth's grade was "arbitrary" and Curth "will no longer have instructional duties at the University."

There's some more noise about how seriously they take student and faculty rights and academic freedom and integrity and it is meaningless, because the university has show exactly where it stands. 

Deeply concerning? How do you enter a classroom to teach knowing that any 19-year-old who skips the reading, gets caught bluffing the assignment, and who cried religious victimization can end your teaching career? 

There are difficult conversations and decisions to be made in the area where academic freedom and personal conviction bump up against each other, but this was not one of them. The correct decision should have been easy to make, and OU somehow managed to blow it anyway. Shame.