A University of Oklahoma student filed a discrimination report after she received a zero out of a 25 for writing an essay that expressed her Christian beliefs on gender norms. The school responded by removing the graduate assistant who graded the essay.
Samantha Fulnecky, a professing Christian, was asked to write a “thoughtful discussion” about an aspect of a scholarly article titled “Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence.”
“I was asked to read an article and give my opinion on the article,” Fulnecky told Fox News Digital, “and the article was about gender binary and mental health and gender stereotypes, specifically in children, because it’s a lifespan development class.”
The junior wrote that “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.”
Arguing that society was pushing a harmful lie that there are multiple genders, Fulnecky’s essay also explained that “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 essay states. “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.”
“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,” she concluded.
The grading criteria included three requirements, including “a clear tie-in to the assigned article,” which was worth up to 10 points. The second requirement was whether the paper presented a “thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary,” which was also worth up to 10 points. The final criterion was whether the paper was clearly written, worth up to five points.
Graduate teaching assistant Mel Curth, a biological male who uses she/they pronouns, graded the paper a zero out of 25. Curth, who stated that the grade was separate from his beliefs, claimed the paper lacked evidence and called it “offensive.”
“He left submission comments saying that my work was offensive, that I need more empathy in my writing, things like if I’m going to argue against the consensus of every medical field. In every medical association in the United States, then I need empirical evidence to back that,” Fulnecky said.
Curth’s comments stated that he was deducting points because Fulnecky’s paper did 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.”
Reasoning that she had been discriminated against for citing the Bible and expressing her religious beliefs, she emailed university authorities with a complaint before filing a discrimination claim against Curth.
In response, the school stated that it “takes seriously concerns involving First Amendment rights, certainly including religious freedoms,” put Curth on administrative leave, and announced that a full-time professor would take his place.
Fulnecky told Fox News Digital that “Jesus is always worth standing up for.”
“I just encourage those people that are dealing with something similar to push back against that kind of behavior and really fight for your university to change, because if we don’t speak up about it, they’re not gonna do anything to change it.”
Fulnecky says she is saddened by Curth’s response.
“I think I would just say that God loves him and that I am saddened that they’re offended by the truth of the Gospel and the truth that I wrote about in my assignment, and it saddens me to see that that offends them and upsets them.”
