{"id":30074,"date":"2025-12-04T16:43:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=30074"},"modified":"2025-12-05T09:17:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T14:17:52","slug":"christian-student-failed-by-teaching-assistant-after-writing-against-gender-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2025\/12\/christian-student-failed-by-teaching-assistant-after-writing-against-gender-theory","title":{"rendered":"Christian Student Failed by Teaching Assistant After Writing Against Gender Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Left: samantha_fulnecky \/ Instagram | Right: OUDeptPsych \/ Facebook<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 \u201creaction paper\u201d in her \u201cLifespan Development\u201d 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. \u201cI 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,\u201d wrote Fulnecky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cMel\u201d Curth, a transgender woman with pronouns \u201cshe\/they\u201d in his social media. In feedback to Fulnecky, Curth stated he was not giving the zero because of \u201ccertain beliefs\u201d but for writing a paper that \u201cdoes not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence\u2026 and is at times offensive.\u201d Curth also pushed back at Fulnecky\u2019s arguments, claiming that \u201cYou may personally disagree with this but that doesn\u2019t 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.\u201d Another professor for the course, Megan Waldron, who also has pronouns in her bio, stated she agreed with Curth\u2019s grade, and implored Fulnecky to \u201cemploy more thoughtfulness in your future assignments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fulnecky filed an official complaint of religious discrimination after attempting to discuss the grade with Curth. \u201cI 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,\u201d Fulnecky told Fox News Digital<\/em><\/a>. 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 \u201cthoughtful discussion of some aspect of the article\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The rubric does not state anything about empirical evidence as being needed for the assignment, something Curth docked Fulnecky for. \u201cIt’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,\u201d said UW-River Falls professor Trevor Tomesh<\/a>, speaking in his personal opinion and not as a representative for his university. Curth was put on administrative leave as the school investigated Fulnecky\u2019s claims. A recent report<\/a> stated that the school has determined the failing essay will not be counted into Fulnecky\u2019s grade for the class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201creaction paper\u201d in her \u201cLifespan Development\u201d class. Fulnecky responded to an article that discussed the idea of gender…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":30077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nChristian Student Failed by Teaching Assistant After Writing Against Gender Theory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A Christian student at the University of Oklahoma filed a religious discrimination complaint after her essay about gender roles received 0.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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