A graduate instructor at the University of Oklahoma was placed on leave after giving a student a failing grade for rejecting the notion that someone’s identity can fall outside of the two genders assigned at birth.
Samantha Fulnecky, 20, received zero points out of 25 total on a 650-word essay assignment requiring students to respond to an academic study that examined whether conformity with gender norms was associated with popularity or bullying among middle school students.
“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,” Fulnecky wrote in her essay provided to The Oklahoman.
“It is frustrating to me when I read articles like this and discussion posts from my classmates of so many people trying to conform to the same mundane opinion, so they do not step on people’s toes. I think that is a cowardly and insincere way to live,” she added.
However, her instructor said the submission failed to “answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.”
“While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs, there is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses, but using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice,” the instructor added.
The school has not revealed the identity of the instructor, who was placed on leave on Nov. 30, according to The Oklahoman.
The incident started gaining national attention after the campus‘s Turning Point USA chapter publicized Fulnecky’s experience following the death of the organization’s founder, Charlie Kirk.
The group subscribes to Christian ideologies, which coincide with the Trump administration’s January executive order mandating federal entities and external partners to recognize only two genders.
“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong,” the executive order reads.
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system,” it continues. “Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.”
