What seemed to be a simple 650-word college essay assignment quickly blew up into a religious discrimination complaint. Samantha Fulnecky, a junior at the University of Oklahoma (UO) who is majoring in psychology, was assigned a 650-word “reaction paper” in her “Lifespan Development” class. Fulnecky responded to an article that discussed the idea of gender stereotypes, with the article asserting that gender norms are a social construct and that men and women are pressured into gender norms by their peers. Fulnecky, who is a Christian, pushed back at the article, referring to her Christian faith and Biblical teachings on gender roles, saying such gender norms are God-given, not socially constructed. “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 what they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth,” wrote Fulnecky.

However, when Fulnecky received her paper back, she found she received 0 points out of a possible 25. The teaching assistant who gave the grade is William “Mel” Curth, a transgender woman with pronouns “she/they” in his social media. In feedback to Fulnecky, Curth stated he was not giving the zero because of “certain beliefs” but for writing a paper that “does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence… and is at times offensive.” Curth also pushed back at Fulnecky’s arguments, claiming that “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, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed.” Another professor for the course, Megan Waldron, who also has pronouns in her bio, stated she agreed with Curth’s grade, and implored Fulnecky to “employ more thoughtfulness in your future assignments.”

Fulnecky filed an official complaint of religious discrimination after attempting to discuss the grade with Curth. “I was asked to read an article and give my opinion on the article, and the article was about gender binary and mental health and gender stereotypes, specifically in children, because it’s a lifespan development class. So I was asked to give my opinion and my reaction to the paper,” Fulnecky told Fox News Digital. The TPUSA chapter at OU quickly championed Fulnecky, sharing her essay, the responses of her professors, and the rubric for the assignment. The rubric asked for a “thoughtful discussion of some aspect of the article” and suggested using “An application of the study or results to your own experiences,” “Your own thoughts about how development proceeds in the domain being researched in the article” as examples of possible topics.

The rubric does not state anything about empirical evidence as being needed for the assignment, something Curth docked Fulnecky for. “It’s not zero worthy, for sure, and if you follow the rubric specifically that was given, I can’t really justify taking off that many points, because it was a very lazy rubric,” said UW-River Falls professor Trevor Tomesh, speaking in his personal opinion and not as a representative for his university. Curth was put on administrative leave as the school investigated Fulnecky’s claims. A recent report stated that the school has determined the failing essay will not be counted into Fulnecky’s grade for the class.