This Univ. of Oklahoma Essay is So Bad It Launched a Culture-War Career

In a psychology course at University of Oklahoma, junior Samantha Fulnecky was assigned to write a short essay responding to a research paper about social enforcement of gender typicality and children's mental health. Rather than engage with the assignment, she wrote a moralistic screed about demons and God's plan for women to be helpers, citing unspecified parts of "the Bible." Her paper received a zero, but she has become a cause celebre among right-wing culture warriors thanks to the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Points USA, who view her as a righteous victim being persecuted for her faith. Bridget and Producer Mike have both graded their share of college papers, so they weigh in on the fairness of her grade, and unpack what's really going on (spoiler: it's a stunt). 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a
former educator, we have got to talk about what's happening at.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
The University of Oklahoma right now. So in this episode,
we'll start with why I think we're uniquely qualified to
weigh in.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
You'll hear the full Bible based paper whose failing grade
was heard around the country and our thoughts on it,
kind of treating it as a good faith assignment, but
also why I think the entire thing is one big scam.
So let's get into it. Mike, you and I both
have backgrounds as educators.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
When I was in grad school for all of eight years,
I funded myself for much of that time through teaching
assistant ships. So I got to teach a couple of
courses in say collegy at a big university in the Midwest,
so in some respects similar to Oklahoma, but in others
pretty different.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yes, I also taed my way through graduate school, but
then I started adjuncting.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Did you ever do any adjuncting?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
I never did any adjuncting, but Honestly, I have been
thinking about it lately. I kind of like miss teaching,
and so this story when you brought it up, kind
of spoke to me. I guess I was like hungry
to think about teaching.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Same by not adjuncting, you missed out on making like
a whopping two thousand dollars a year.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
It was not well paid work, that is my sense
of it. Yeah, I guess talk to me again after
I do it. But you know, I wouldn't necessarily be
doing it for the money, but just to I don't know,
there's something exciting and fun about talking with students, and
often they show up with so much enthusiasm and genuine

(01:58):
interest in learning. So maybe I'm just really romanticizing something
that I haven't actually done in well over ten years.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
No, no, no, I completely agree. I absolutely loved my
time in the classroom. I had a personalized license plate
that said love to teach or live to teach, depending
on how you read it. And yeah, I was that
person who there was an energy and an excitement from
being around young learners that I have not felt replicated

(02:26):
any place else in my career. So yeah, I started
out tiang and grad school. I adjuncted. I taught writing
courses all over DC, Maryland, Virginia, including two different religious universities,
a Catholic university at a seven Day Adventist university, so
I have greated a few papers that reference the Bible
in my day. I got my job as a full

(02:47):
time instructor at Howard University here in DC, go Ahu,
where I taught for many years. I was also on
what they call them the Enrichment Committee, which was sort
of a cohort of instructors that basically had to stay
abreast of the newest teaching methods to train other teachers
to make sure that they were, you know, doing it

(03:07):
the best way they could. So we both have spent
you know, done our hours in front of the classroom.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
I actually got some teaching experience as an undergraduate. Me
and a couple friends started a student club at Northeastern
University to teach English as a second language to some
of the staff on campus who were like janitorial or
cafeteria workers who had recently come to Boston from other

(03:35):
countries and didn't speak English. So that was a really
fun and also challenging experience. And then when I got
to Wisconsin, for grad school, I tead several seminars, a
couple of big lectures, a couple smaller seminars, similar to

(03:55):
the type of course that we're going to talk about
in a little bit here, where it's like not an
intro level course, but like a what I would call
a two hundred level course, where you have to have
taken like one or more super basic intro to psych
courses to then be eligible to take something a little
bit further into a specific topic, like, for example, psychology

(04:18):
over the lifespan and how that changes. And those courses
were always really fun to teach because they were focused
enough that they are they have a particular topic. They're
not trying to cover all of psychology, but they're open
ended enough and introductory enough that you get to cover
a lot of different things.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Well, here's the real question. In your time teaching, did
you fail students? I did fail a few. Yeah, not
very many. Because University of Wisconsin is a very good school.
It's tough to get in. All the students coming in.
We're high quality students, very like good. Not all of
them were great writers, but even still we had some
who would And most of the time, if I think

(05:02):
about you know, the few students who still haunt my nightmares.
It was just because they didn't show up, they didn't
do the work. But there were also grade grubbers who
were like right on the borderline. I can still remember
this one woman who was just really dissatisfied with the grades.
She got on a paper and came to office hours,
and I guess thought that like just continuing to stand

(05:26):
her ground in my office and refusing to leave was
somehow gonna change her grade, but it did not.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
I not a grade rubbing fit in Yeah. So, yeah,
I did have to fail some students, not very often,
but occasionally, and I didn't feel good, particularly in those
rare cases where see the student really had tried, but
perhaps psychology was just not for them. How about you,
Did you ever fail students? Were you?

Speaker 2 (05:52):
You were?

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Probably like you're so nice, You're probably a real pushover.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Huh oh.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
I may come off as a sweetie pie on this show,
but I was is kind of a hard ass in
the classroom.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
That's what my rate my professor said about me, anyway.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
And I asked about you failing students Because I've not
been in the classroom for a while, I don't know
that it's acceptable to fail students, even students who deserve
a failing grade anymore.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
I was doing all my teaching pre COVID.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
My understanding is that things have really changed instruction wise
since then. But when I was in the classroom, I
really saw failing students who did not deserve a passing
grade as a kind of kindness, like a tough love. Right,
it is not kind or fair to just pass a
student off to another level that they might not be

(06:39):
ready for, just in the hopes that like another professor
will sort it out, especially for a writing class.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
I was teaching writing classes.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Students need to know how to passibly write if they
are going to be adequately prepared to finish college and
get a job. Right, we had resources. I was a resource.
I had office hours, we had the writing center.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
You know.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Sometimes it through the course of working together, students might
realize that they need some kind of that accommodation, so
we would work with them if that was the case.
But ultimately, somebody who has not demonstrated an ability to
write passively should not just get passed along to the
next class. They should have to try again. And I'm
so sorry, but that is a failing grade with the
big caveat that, nobody in my class was ever surprised

(07:21):
that they were failing. If you were even a little
bit at risk of failing, you were not just finding
that out when you got the failing grade, right, You
had to sort of almost really work at it. To
get a failing grade, you would have had to disregard
a lot of come to Jesus conversations. If you were
surprised to be receiving an F in my class, you
either were not paying attention or just like genuinely did

(07:44):
not care, or like never showed up. There's had to
be something else going on. Nobody got an F who
was like, oh, what do you mean?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
A myth? Everybody knew what the deal was by the
time they got that grade.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
You bring up a good point that I think a
lot of universities, particularly like public universities, do have a
lot of resources for students trying to learn to write
and otherwise having trouble writing. I was teaang psychology courses,
and some of them were more stats focused, but the
majority of them were content focused. And even though psychology

(08:13):
it's all writing, like writing is the most fundamental skill
for so many things, And absolutely I think you were
doing those students a kindness by not just passing them
just off to go to a higher level that they
weren't ready for. Absolutely, people need to know how to write,

(08:35):
especially if they're going to go into psychology or one
of the social sciences, where like writing is what you
do that the product is written works.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yes, So, as two people who have failed our fair
share of students over our teaching careers, I feel like
we are qualified to weigh in on what's happening in Oklahoma.
So here is what's going on. Samantha Fulnecki is a
junior at University of Oklahoma. She turned in an assignment
for a class called Lifespan Development in the Psychology department.

(09:04):
The course catalog described it as a survey of psychological
changes across the lifespan, the changes in cognitive, social, emotional,
and physiological development from conception to death. We took a
look at the course catalog, Mike, from being a psychologist
and somebody who was in this space, you said it.
I assumed it was a higher level course, but you
said it was sort of like a mid range course.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, it's listened at the two thousand level, which I'm
familiar with classes being like like a one hundred level
is an introductory course. Two hundred level is open to
freshman sophomores who have completed their Introduction to Psychology course
so that they can have some basic foundations on which
to start learning about different topic areas. And so that's

(09:47):
what this seemed to be. One of those courses that
there was only one prerequisite listed, which was introducted, their
equivalent to Introduction to Psychology. So what I assume is
happening here, I'm not certain, but I assume that this
was a course open to sophomore's freshmen who had taken
intro to Psychology and wanted to take additional psychology courses

(10:10):
about topics. So not a high level course, but one
that people would take pretty early on in their college career.
Is my sense based on looking at the course Catalan.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
And according to ou Daily, Samantha is a psychology major,
So this is while it's not a high level course,
it's not an introductory course, and it's a course that
is in her field of study in her major.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yes, that's what it seems to be the case. He
seems to be wanting to be a psych major Interestingly,
at Wisconsin you had to be a sophomore before you
could declare to be a psych major, and you also
had to pass this like pretty grueling, intensive research seminar

(10:53):
that was essentially like a filter course. So I don't
know if they have anything similar to that at Oklahoma.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Oh you want to be a psych major? How bad
do you want it?

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Like?

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, kinda, because there's this phenomenon that like psychology. I mean,
I'm a little bit biased, but it's just an inherently
interesting domain, right Like people are social, we think about
other people, we think about ourselves. So a lot of
the questions that psychology addresses are very accessible and familiar
to lots of people, and that's why people are interested

(11:25):
in psychology. That's why we have so many like pop
psychology books and little like BuzzFeed style quizzes about what
type of person you are? Just an inherently interesting thing,
and so it attracts a lot of students, which is great,
you know. I think it's wonderful for people of all
persuasions and walks of life to learn more about psychology.

(11:45):
But it attracts a lot of people to the major,
some of whom are serious about psychology as a discipline
and a social science. Others who are not and think
that those short, little BuzzFeed quizzes are like the pinnacle
of psych when in fact they are not. And the
people who are taking it seriously are then going to
go on to work through the courses, work their way

(12:08):
up towards a degree that then they will use towards
some vocation related to psychology. The people who are just
approaching it as like interesting fluff that doesn't really require
a whole lot of critical thought or taking time to
understand the methods or understand the stats that are involved

(12:30):
in learning things and having confidence in our conclusions. Those
folks should not be getting psychology degrees. They should just
continue reading magazines.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
You gotta weed out the duds I was saying.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
I mean for their own good. Like you said, you know,
you don't want to give somebody a passing grade and
send them onward when they don't have the skills to
do what's currently in front of them. You don't want
to just hand out psych degrees to anybody who wants some.
I mean, if that's what you want, there are plenty
of places where you can just buy a degree without

(13:07):
putting in work online. During Trump's first term, he passed
a bunch of rules that made that even easier. But
we need to get into that. Like, if you want
to buy a psych degree, you can, But if you
want to get a psych degree from a respected university
where it's going to mean something, you have to put
in the work for it. It's not just a matter of

(13:27):
like regurgitating the opinions that you showed up with on
your first day of freshman year.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Okay, So I want to get into that because you
make a point that I want to come back to
later after we talk about what's going on. But for
this lifespan psychology course, Junior Samantha was asked to write
a six hundred and fifty word essay reacting to a
study that she was assigned to read about how people
are perceived based on societal expectations of gender. I did

(13:53):
a little digging, and I found the study that she
was meant to be responding to. It's called relations among
gender typicality, pure relations, and mental health during early Adolescence.
The abstract describes the study as examining whether being high
in gender typicalities associated with popularity, whether it being low
in gender typicality is associated with rejection and teasing, and
whether teasing due to low gender typicality mediates the association

(14:17):
with negative mental health.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
They looked at.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Middle school children thirty four boys and fifty girls described
hypothetical popular and rejected or teased peers, and completed self
report measures about their own gender typicality, experiences with gender
based teasing, depressive symptoms, anxiety, self esteem, and body image.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
So it's a pretty like meaty study.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
And her task was to read the study and respond
in what the instructor asked for to be a thoughtful reaction.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
These kind of things I think were typical in seminars
that I was a teaching assistant for where you'd have
one or more readings each week and the students were
asked to write a little thing responding to what they
had read, where the goal was really to force them
to demonstrate that they had read it at all, but
also to force them to critically think about the substance

(15:12):
of what had been done in the study.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Oh my gosh, I will get into this when we
when we look at the rubric for how this essay
was graded. But the way that in the assignment probably
says three different times, three different ways. Do not just summarize.
Do not just summarize the fact that, I mean, I've
been there. But the fact that this instructor had to
essentially beg the students not to just summarize and demonstrate

(15:38):
some sort of thoughtful analysis really says a lot to me.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, and it's you know, it's it can be hard.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
I think for some students making the transition from high
school to college to put something of their self into analysis.
I think a lot of students can do quite well
in high school just you know, painting by numbers, doing
what they're supposed to do. And I think some students
when they get to college struggle with the concept that

(16:05):
you're supposed to add some of your own insight analysis
perspective here, but do it in a way that is
consistent with how we as a field of psychologists critique
studies and use studies as evidence to inform conclusions. It
can be tricky.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:30):
Let's take a quick break at our back.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Okay, so I'm going to read the essay that Samantha
turned in. It's not very long, I promise this article
was very thought provoking and caused me to thoroughly evaluate
the idea of gender and the role that plays in
our society. The article discussed peers using teasing as a
way to enforce gender norms. I should say that is
the one sentence that specifically engages with the source text

(17:08):
in a reaction article. You got one sentence that describes
anything specifically going on in the study that she's been
asked to react to. I do not necessarily see this
as a problem. 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.

(17:29):
Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered stereotypes. Women
naturally want to do womenly things because God created us
with those womanly desires in our hearts. 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,

(17:51):
and we should live our lives with that in mind.
It is frustrating to me when I read articles like
this and discussion posts from my classmates of so many
people try to conform to the same mundane opinion, so
they do not step on people's toes. I think that
as a cowardly and insincere way to live, it is
important to use the freedom of speech we have been

(18:11):
given in this country, and I personally believe that eliminating
gender in our society would be detrimental as it pulls
us farther from God's original plan for humans. It is
perfectly normal for kids to follow gender stereotypes because that
is how God made us. The reason so many girls
want to feel womanly and care for others in a
motherly way is not because they feel pressured to fit

(18:33):
social norms. It is because God created and chows them
to reflect his beauty and his compassion in that way.
In Genesis, God says that it is not good for
man to be alone, so he created a helper for man,
which is a woman.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Many people assume.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
The word helper in this context to be condescending and
offensive to women. However, the original word in Hebrew is ezerconnectdo,
and that directly translates to helper equal to. Additionally, God
himself describes in the Bible using ezer canneto or helper,
and he describes his Holy Spirit as our helper as well.

(19:10):
This shows the importance God places on the role of
the helper women's roles. God does not view women as
less significant than men. He created us with such intentionally
and care, and he made women in his image of
being a helper and in the image of his beauty.
If leaning into that role means I am quote following

(19:30):
gender stereotypes that I am happy to be following a
stereotype that aligns with the gifts and abilities God gave
me as a woman. I do not think men and
women are pressured to be more masculine or feminine. I
strongly disagree with the idea from the article that encouraging
acceptance of diverse gender expressions could improve students' confidence society.
Pushing the live that there are multiple genders and everyone

(19:53):
to just be whatever they want is demonic and severely
harms American youth.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
I do not want kid to be teased or bullied
in school.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
However, pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth
and everyone can just do whatever they want and be
whoever they want is not biblical whatsoever. The Bible says
that our lives are not our own, but that our
lives and bodies belong to.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
The Lord for his glory.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
I live my life based on this truth and firmly
believe that there would be less gender issues and insecurities
and children if they were raised knowing that they do
not belong to themselves, but they belong to.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
The Lord overall.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Reading articles such as this one encouraged me to one
day raise my children knowing they have a heavenly Father
who loves them and cherish 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. My prayer for the world,
and specifically for American society and youth is that they

(20:52):
would not believe the lies being spread from Satan that
make them believe they are better off as another gender
than what God means them. I pray that they will
feel God's love and acceptance as who He originally created
them to be.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
The end.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
So that's the essay thoughts.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, I mean, I think essay is a good word
for what it is. You know, it's it really is
responding to a lot of stuff that is just not
present in the study at all. It's just an essay
about her opinion based on, you know, her religious beliefs,

(21:37):
which could be fine in a different course or context.
But it doesn't engage with the symptoms of the study
at all. Right, and so this is a psychology course.
One of the main things about psychology is that we
use evidence to inform theories, and like, she doesn't engage

(21:58):
with the study. She talks about how she doesn't see
gender non typicality as a problem. Okay, Well, in the
study they measure it pretty concretely as negative mental health outcomes.
They find that boys who have low gender typicality have

(22:18):
more negative mental health outcomes, So, like that is a
problem there. Maybe she doesn't care about that. Maybe she
thinks that's good that those boys are being like teased
and feel bad about themselves as a way to enforce
gender typicality on them. Maybe she hasn't thought about it
that deeply. But she really just doesn't engage with the

(22:42):
study much at all. You know, Yeah, I don't know.
Those are my initial reactions. What do you think.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
I feel the same before when I first read her essay,
before reading the study that she was assigned to respond to,
I was like, Okay, well, she's sort of name checking.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
What she what she read a few times.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
That was before I realized what she was assigned to
read and respond to was like an actual study.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
I am.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
I am no longer convinced that she read the full study.
I think that perhaps she read the abstract. But yeah,
I know, I'm no longer I've since reading the actual
study that she was given to respond to.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
I've really changed my thinking around this.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
And you know, she she references the study like, name
checks it twice, but doesn't talk about any specifics. Truly,
it would be like if I was given an assignment
to write about the movie Wicked, and I turned in
an article about how I don't like going to the
movie theater, I don't like leaving my house, I don't
like taking the train.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yet the prices like, it's not really when you when
you when you read.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
The study, it's not really It does not really engage
with the study in any kind of meaningful way.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
The point here is that the study itself is not
weighing in on the morality of being highly gender typical
or not. It is attempting to measure the phenomenon among
kids and measuring a mechanism by which it might be

(24:13):
enforced through you know, social norms and other interpersonal dynamics,
and then the mental health consequences of that. Like, these
are the things that psychology looks at. It measures constructs,
and proposes mechanistic theories of how this construct affects this outcome.

(24:34):
The stuff that she's talking about, you know, how kids
should be and saying that like it's better, like better,
how certainly not better for mental health? You know if
you can't. She doesn't even try to put her argument
in the terms of something that could be psychologically measured.

(24:58):
She's just says it's it's better from this morality position,
which is a different thing.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Well, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
I think that she saw the title, read the abstract,
perhaps skinned it, and assumed this is a study that
it's all about the opinion that you know, we should not.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Be, that bullying is bad, and that.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Everybody should be quote whatever they want all the time
or whatever. Like I think that she just, like it's
clear to me that she's making a lot of assumptions
about what is actually in the study, because I don't
think she actually engaged with it in a real way.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, she could have written her whole essay based on
the title alone, Like she didn't even need to read
the abstract, let alone the study itself.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
And ultimately, that's what this thing was.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
It's not like the Nobel Committee really wanted to know
this particular young woman's thoughts on the subject. This was
an assignment for her to demonstrate to her teacher that
she has learned some of the material that has been
covered in the class, learned about how she, as a

(26:05):
psych major, is expected to talk about studies, talk about constructs,
talk about behavior. And you know, she really failed to
do any of that.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
Well, she failed to do any of that, and she
got a failing grade because this paper got a zero
out of possible twenty five points.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Here's what she had to say about it.

Speaker 5 (26:24):
I just did the assignment and turned it in, and
I talked about the Bible in it. That is, I
view all my opinions in the world through the Bible.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
I gave my opinion and not just my opinion.

Speaker 5 (26:38):
But that's like, the Bible says that God created male
and female, and anything that's not from God or glorifying
to God is glorifying to the enemy.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
I have to say, I am disappointed with how I've
seen this story being framed. I've seen these headlines like
even she describes it as being failed for citing the Bible.
That's not really correct because her paper doesn't specifically cite
anything at all, really biblical or otherwise. It's just her
opinion and then kind of referencing the Bible and God's

(27:09):
will more generally, so like the idea that she was
failed for citing the Bible, she don't cite anything like,
that's just not true. I've seen that kind of parroted
over and over again, not crapt.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Yeah, you can't just say the word God and be
like I've cited the Bible. No, you haven't.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
So the big question is did this paper deserve that
great zero out of twenty five points? Now I will
own that I have what might be a bit of
an unpopular opinion about this, But in my opinion, it's
a little bit difficult to say whether or not this
paper deserved a zero.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Obviously, this essay is not good, right, no one is.
I It was not a good essay, not a passing essay.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Turning in an essay that suggests that it's okay to
bully trans kids.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Is just like not a good essay, full stop.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
But I've had to grade plenty of essays that espouse
worldviews that I find abrant. Right like you teach at
a Catholic university, you're gonna get some anti choice essays
that use the Bible to support their reasoning. I've graded
dozens of papers like that. So the real question to
me is not is this a good paper or a
bad paper? It's obviously a bad paper, that's not the question.
The real question is is this a failing paper along

(28:22):
the criteria outlined in the rubric? Because ask people who
have been in the classroom and graded student papers, the
most important thing in grading is the rubric. You've got
to have an ironclad rubric that students get ahead of time,
so that if a student complains or there is confusion
about why they got a grade, you just go back
to the rubric and explain why, but also sort of

(28:43):
defend yourself. Was that your experience in teaching writing assignments
as well?

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah? Totally, and even more generally than that, I think
it's good when expectations are very clear, like it's yes,
it is, uh, cover your ass document and defend yourself
against students who have complaints, but also it is like
a fair good faith document to make sure we're all

(29:08):
on the same page. We all have the same expectations.
Yeah and yeah you got. You have to have a
good rubric, good description of what students are being asked
to do.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
So I have the grading rubric here. It gives a
little bit of an outline of what of Like the mechanics.
It has to be six hundred and fifty words. If
it's less than that, it will not get credit. If
it's past a deadline or lock of credit. It says,
please remember that your reaction paper should not be a summary,
but rather a thoughtful discussion of some aspect of the article.
It lays out a couple of potential approaches to the

(29:43):
reaction you know, things like a discussion of why you
feel the topic is important and worthy of study or not.
An application of the study or results to your own experiences,
an application of the study or results to observations about others' behaviors,
linking the objectives or findings from the assigned article to
other domains of development, or other findings that we have
read or discussed in class. But then it also says

(30:05):
there are other possibilities as well. The best reaction papers
illustrate that students have read the assigned materials and engage
in critical thinking about some aspect of the article. Now
here's the important bit of that. The actual grading rubric scale.
The scale is as followed.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
One.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Does the paper show a clear tie in to the
assigned article?

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Ten points? Two?

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to
the article rather than a summary ten points? Three? Is
the paper clearly written five points? I will say after
taking a look at this rubric, I was surprised that
it was not the most specific. Now it is entirely
possible that there are other grading expectations that have been

(30:47):
made clear in this class. For instance, perhaps the syllabus
says that all written work needs to include citations, or
maybe the instructor said that verbally in class. There can
be no confusion about it unless you weren't listening. But
just going from this rubric as written, I have to
say I was a little bit surprised to see that
this grading rubric was not the most specific for a

(31:08):
college course.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
What are your thoughts?

Speaker 3 (31:11):
I agree, I think also, you know, I think we're
going to get to the instructor pretty soon. But the
instructor is a graduate student themselves, right, and so they
probably do not have extensive experience teaching. And I would
make a bet that after this experience of getting dragged
through the national news, they will approach their grading rubrics

(31:32):
with fresh eyes in the future and perhaps firm them
up a little bit. But I agree with you, it's
a little bit vague about what exactly is needed, and
in fact it does seem pretty permissible, like stepping back
from exactly what it calls for. My overall takeaway from
this is like, right, a six hundred and fifty word

(31:54):
thing that shows that you read the article and demonstrate
some critical thought about it. I think that's really what's
being asked for here. But you know, they list these
eight separate possible approaches that might be taken. They say
that other possibilities could exist as well. So it does
give the sense that it is fairly open about how

(32:15):
a student might complete this assignment. One thing that I
do want to that I do wonder about, is you know,
at what point in the semester was this assignment done,
Because it gives the sense of an assignment that is,
like every week students are going to be reading a
paper and writing one of these little six hundred and
fifty word responses. And so if this happened late in

(32:38):
the semester, it's kind of a different thing that have
happened early in the semester. Right of if this is
the first paper that somebody turned in, you know, I
might grade it one way and then have a conversation
with that student about like, you know, I gave you
a decent grade here, but in the future, I'm going
to be looking for x YZ, just to get us
aligned on what the expectations are. But it happened late

(32:59):
in semester, it makes me wonder has this been a
pattern all semester long where this student just turns in
garbage after garbage and refuses to listen to feedback. I
don't know if that's what's happening or not, but it
does feel like it would be important context within that
particular classroom before this whole thing blew up and became

(33:23):
national news.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
So Samantha does say that she turned she had she's
already had several assignments of this nature in this class,
and that she's done them all the same way, and
that she's never received a bad grade, and that this
was her first bad grade.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
I cannot vouch for that, but that's what she said
in an.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Interview, and it does sort of to me seemed to
set up a very convenient pattern because the instructor who
gave her this grade is trans And I think that
what Samantha is trying to suggest is that, oh, my
instructor didn't have a problem when I turned in all
these essays the exact same way. But when I turn
in one where I say that, you know, being trans

(34:04):
is demonic, all of a sudden, the instructor has a
problem and gives me a zero. That's sort of what
I think is being set up here. Again, I cannot
speak to the truth of whether or not it is
true that she has tarned that the student has turned
in several papers the exact same way, but this is
what she says. Huh.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
It is kind of hard to believe that, like, she's
just been turning in psychology papers that are supposed to
be critiquing and responding to studies, and if she's just
been turning them all in offering her moral opinions about
how people should lead their lives without addressing the substance
of any of the studies, and she's been getting good

(34:46):
grades for them the whole time. I find that a
little difficult to believe.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Same, same, same, same.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
What grade would you give this paper if somebody turns
it in one of your psych classes?

Speaker 3 (34:58):
So again, it does it would matter if it was
the beginning of the semester or or later on. But
I giving the student the benefit of the doubt, which
I generally like to do until they give me reason
not to, you know, I'd probably I probably would have
given her like a ten or something like that, like
it was the right length, it addressed the topic, you know,

(35:22):
I try to be generous again, giving the benefit of
the doubt, you know, And it would also I might
call on her in class to share her opinion and insane.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
You would give the student of a platform like I
would have already been like this students a problem. The
way to deal with them is to not give them
the attention that they are so clearly asking for.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
This is exactly the wrong kind.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Of student to be like, oh, the floor is yours.
Tell us why you feel this way.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
Well, then the part that would happen after that is
that we would use the class to explain why this
response is like not psychology and not what is being
looked for in this type of assignment, and really misses
the entire point of what the study is trying to do.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Oh, this is so I know exactly what you should do.
Have it be a peer review day.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Match her up with the student who you know is
going to be like, cannot wait to tear this essay apart,
and really you know that's you got to Yeah that
I'm with you on that.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
I'm with you on that.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yeah, make it a learning opportunity. I don't know exactly
what the right approach would be, but I don't know,
but I guess I'm giving way too much credit because
some of the stuff that we haven't got to yet,
it doesn't seem like she's really acting in good faith here.

Speaker 5 (36:53):
More.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
We've been talking about this just because we're educators from
a perspective of like if a student had meaningfully turned

(37:14):
this essay in and good faith spoiler alert, I do
not believe that's what's going on here, But just for
the sake of argument, let's talk about it.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
In that is, if that's what's going on.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
Yeah, yeah, so what grade would you have given. If
this was just a run of the mill, good faith
student turns this in.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
I could go as high as eight out of twenty five.
I could see ten, and I still have lots of
friends who are in academia. Who are you know, lecturers
and adjuncts and instructors.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
I asked around.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Generally it fell somewhere between like three and ten. Ten
was the highest grade anybody was willing to go, which
is still a failing grade.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
I could probably go as high as eight on this.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
However, in my class, a zero is for somebody who
didn't turn something in, plagiarized, or had some other kind
of like big problem if you, A zero is for
no effort made. This is a failing paper, to be sure.
But in my cause, I don't think I would have
given it in a zero. Honestly, this probably would have
been a SeeMe situation. Again, it does sort of does

(38:20):
go back to your point of like when in the
semester did this happen?

Speaker 2 (38:24):
You know?

Speaker 1 (38:25):
I could see being like, if this is how you feel,
you need to go back and actually meaningfully engage with
the source tex to support what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yeah, or like rewrite this and turn it in and
I'll grade that or something.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yes, And I will say a lot of people online
have been saying, how this is just not a well
written assignment. How could somebody who was a junior at
a university turn this turn work like this in I
am sad to say it is not wildly out of
staff with the kinds of assignments that instructors are used
to seeing. That Chronicle of Higher Educations spoke to Oliver Treldy,

(39:01):
an assistant professor at the Institute of American Constitutional Thought
and Leadership at the University of Toledo, who said that
while lots of people were.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Completely shocked at the quality of.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
The writing here, if you create a lot of papers,
it is not at a shocking level.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
It is kind of at that level that, although it's lower.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
Than what you want and certainly lower than average, it's
the sort of paper that you're used to seeing, which
is kind of sad but true. And I think one
of the issues that is getting sort of lost in
the sauce of the obvious culture war issue being stoked
here is that reality that that kind of writing that
students are turning in this is not shockingly bad. This

(39:41):
is probably like baseline and like, shouldn't we be talking
about that?

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Shouldn't that be a concern, a cause for concern.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Seriously, you did a nice job reading it, kind of
smoothing over some of the grammatical errors. Yes, it's just
riddled with grammatical errors. There's no other way to say that.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
So, because the instructor of this class is trans, what
is obviously being set up here is that the instructor
was just personally offended by what Samantha wrote.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
And that's what her bad grade was all about.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
However, in the feedback that the instructor left for Samantha,
they don't say this at all. So the instructor of
this class, Melkirk, who was a decorated instructor who had
just won the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from oeu's Department
of Psychology, who also happens to be trans, gave Samantha
the grade. They left what I would consider to be
pretty thoughtful feedback. In this feedback to full NECKI, the

(40:35):
instructor insisted that they were not panalizing the student for
her personal beliefs, but wrote, quote, 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.

(40:59):
Is not best practice. They also implored the student to
apply some more perspective and empathy in her work and
told her that quote calling an entire group of people
demonic is highly ofthensive, especially a minoritized population. I will
say shout out to this instructor because the feet they gave,
like I'm only even reading just a segment of it,

(41:21):
but the feedback that they gave again, I.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Think really engaged with the what was written in good faith.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Nowhere in the feedback was it like you obviously hate
trans people like me, and that's why you're failing. I
think you know, saying if this is how you feel,
you need to come with some you know, some hypothesis
or empirical findings to support or challenge what you don't
agree with in this piece, and like laying out a

(41:49):
pathway to do that, as you said, And so the
idea that I don't think that an instructor who was
just super sensitive and offended by what was written would
give such substantive feedback on an essay like this, That's
truly what was going on.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah, it does seem like the instructor really tried to
provide guidance about why the student received a failing grade. Here,
what they could have done differently to get a better grade.
And yeah, it seems like the student really needs to
hear that in a big way.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yes, And so it sounds like when a student gets
a failing grade and has a complaint about that, another
instructor gives a second set of eyes to make sure
that grade was warranted. So another instructor for this course,
Megan Waldron, who is not trans said that they took
a look at it and concurred with the initial f grade,
saying that Samantha's essay quote should not be considered as

(42:45):
a completion of the assignment. Similarly gave feedback to Samantha
that said, hey, be more thoughtful and cite some sort
of empirical evidence. It's not just your opinions on God
to buttress the arguments that you're.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Making in your peace.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
So a two different instructors now have given I would say,
like very good, thoughtful feedback on what went wrong and
how to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
For this kind of assignment.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, cite some empirical evidence. That's the whole thing. This
is not religious studies, this is psychology. Cite some empirical evidence,
either from the study that you're supposed to be responding to,
talk about some of their data or methods, or bring
in some other studies that maybe support what you're saying

(43:30):
in some kind of way where they have measured something.
Cite some empirical evidence. That's good practice, and really it's
good practice for everybody in all sorts of disciplines.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Oh man, this is a bit of a non sequitor,
But I don't know if you felt this way when
you were teaching. One of my favorite kind of students
to teach was like smartasses, and I used to have
as part of my syllabus, like one of the assigments
that you had to do was a had a public
speaking component, so you had test of present findings on
a topic of your choice and then support it with

(44:04):
research that you did as part of a research project.
And one of my students the topic of their public
speaking assignment was why they did not think it was
fair to have a public speaking component of a writing.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Class, and damned if they had not gotten.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Very good research, Like they were able to cite each argument,
and I felt personally called out, but I was very proud.
I was like, damn, he really went through a lot
of trouble to find empirical sources that are like, here's
why expressing yourself verbally in front of the class should
not be a component of a writing class, and.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
He got today.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
So I didn't happen to agree with it, but he
did a great job of presenting the argument and backing
it up with data and research.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
My hands were tied there.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
You go, yeah, good on you for not giving him
a zero because you disagreed with what he was saying.
As this student is a legend was done here.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
I mean when you're when you're when you were an instructor,
you get all kinds of students, semester of dismester, you
see all kinds of assignments.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
The idea that this would have been.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
The first time that a trans instructor has maybe seen
an essay from a student that was, to put it mildly,
not the most empathetic toward the trans community. I highly,
highly doubt that this was the first time that instructor
received an essay like this, And so I think this

(45:29):
idea that, oh, this instructor was just super sensitive and
couldn't handle it and got offended. That's so out of stuff.
With how minoritized people live their lives. People always think like, oh,
this is the first time that they've encountered this kind
of attitude, and it's like, no, actually it's a dime
a does it? And like we're encountering shit like this
all the time and have to dis roll with it
if you want to have careers. Actually, this is You're
not special, You're not unique, like truly, come on.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
Yeah, you think this is the first time that they
encountered some anti a trans sentiment.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
No, So, needless to say, Antha was not happy to
get a zero on her assignment. Now, according to the
academic grade policy at University of Oklahoma, an appeal can
only be considered after the student has made an unsuccessful
attempt to resolve differences with the instructor.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
According to reporting from.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
The Oklahoma And Samantha disputed this grade at the graduate
instructor and was still denied credit for the assignment, so
she filed a formal claim of a legal discrimination based
on religious beliefs, and, according to The New York Times,
just hours after the instructor refused to raise her grade,
Samantha emailed the Governor of Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma President

(46:34):
Joe Harris Junior, her college is Dean news outlet, and
the Teacher Freedom Alliance led by the Former States led
by former Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters, who if that name
sounds familiar to you, we've spoken about him before. He
is the person who demanded that all schools teach the
Bible and that all teachers who are not from Oklahoma

(46:55):
pass a screening test to ward off quote woke indoctrination.
She emailed all of these people within hours of this
instructor declining to give a different grade. Her paper was
then published in full on the social media account of
the University of Oklahoma chapter of Turning Points USA, the
organization started by the late Charlie Kirk, saying that she

(47:17):
cited the Bible as her only source, but really did
not seem to grapple much with the content of the
original source material.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
This I actually found very funny.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Because I was looking at the social media posts about
this from Turning Points, USA, and they were really posting
that paper like a gotcha, Like they thought, Samantha ate
with that paper?

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Does this paper.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Deserve an F And what's funny is that in like
writing teacher pedagogy circles, It's like, oh yeah, it actually
the essay actually has worked a conversation about how bad
student writing has got.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
It really like that is perhaps the most shocking thing
of this entire story to me, that she was willing
to publish that paper online and thought that it would
make her look good in some way. It's so bad,
Like it makes her look like she writes like a
middle schooler, because that is the level at which she writes.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
So in a response on social media, the University of
Oklahoma said that it is launching an investigation. They also
said that full Necki would not suffer any academic harm
from the grade. I don't know exactly what that means,
but I think what they're saying is like, I don't
know if they're saying this grade on this one assignment
is going to be thrown out, or if she's not
at risk of failing the class.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
So it's not going to impact her GPA.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
I'm not totally sure what that means, but to me,
it kind of seems like, even though this investigation has
not been completed, it kind of sounds to me like
she sort of already won. They already decided that she's
not going to have to actually, you know, endure this
grade that she got.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
Yeah, that is what it sounds like. I'm sure the
university just wants to move on from this, and like
perhaps she's won this battle of not receiving a failing
mark on this paper. This dragged out her grade, But
I do feel like she's losing the larger war by
having that thing posted on the internet for all of time,

(49:08):
as riddled as it is with grammatical errors, logical fallacies, vapidness.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Yes, so I have to say the instructor mel is
being put on leave during the investigation and as essentially
not coming back to finish out the semester. I have
not seen a lot of people reporting on just how
disruptive this could potentially be to somebody who was also
in graduate school.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
A lot of times, as you and I both did.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
The way that grad students pay for school is through teaching,
and if an instructor is not teaching. They might not
be able to pay for their classes, so it can
potentially derailed their coursework. So being put on leave as
a graduate student and then instructor is no small thing.
It could really have a negative impact on this person's
schooling and this education that they are entitled to.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
I do really feel bad for the instructor here, because
grad school is also very stressful. You know, you're trying
to teach at probably this might not even be the
only course that this instructor is teaching this semester, and
also trying to do their own coursework and also trying
to do research towards their dissertation.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
It's just a.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
Stressful, difficult time. Also, you're broke through the entire thing.
So having this kind of big national I don't know,
news story where you've got turning Point USA rallying the
anti transmob online to come down on this instructor and

(50:41):
their whole department. I really feel for the instructor.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Me too, And I guess that's my big point is
that I don't believe this, But let's say, for the
sake of argument, that this instructor the paper deserved a
higher grade than I've got this instructor got it wrong,
should have gotten a higher grade. Is that the kind
of thing that deserves a national outcry? Is that situation

(51:09):
made better for anybody other than the student to have
that be something that is completely blown up where national
figures are weighing in and it becomes a flashpoint, I
would argue, no, I mean, and I think that's what
extremists and that culture warriors like people associated with Turning
Points USA want. So Turning Points USA, which we know

(51:29):
is was formed by the late Charlie Kirk, has been
all over this. They put out a very hateful statement,
misgendering the instructor mel Kirk, of course, calling for them
to be fired because this instructor is trans. The way
it's being talked about in these conservative media circles, it's
probably pretty unshocking. This trans educator is trampling a student's

(51:51):
freedom of speech for being Christian. We have lawmakers weighing in.
Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, describe the situation as
deeply concerning and it's calming on the University of Oklahoma
regions to review the investigation to ensure that other students
are not unfairly panealized for their beliefs. Mind you, I
don't think this person was penalized for their beliefs.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
I think they were being panalized for their shit writing.

Speaker 3 (52:13):
I think, like, yeah, there's shit writing, their inability to
engage with the substance of the study as evidence. I
get so annoyed that they're talking about this as a
freedom of speech issue. Like, freedom of speech has nothing
to do with this. It's not like she's being locked
up for her beliefs or something. She's just not getting

(52:35):
points on a written assignment that she thinks she ought
to have gotten because she didn't do the assignment. It's
like she's supposed to be learning something from the instructor.
The instructor says, you did not learn the thing that
you needed to learn. You did not demonstrate that you
have internalized these skills that we're trying to teach you.

(52:55):
You get a failing grade. Whether or not the instructor
was writing that. That's just like how it is. The
freedom of speech has nothing to do with this. This
is a pedagogical thing.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
When I was in college, I once got super drunk
the day before an assignment and didn't show up and
got a zero because I didn't show up.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
That was freedom of speech.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Actually, you know I should if we were if we should,
if we were allowed to just say, actually, it's freedom
of speech that I should get a one hundred even
though I didn't show up and do the assignment. I
wish I could go back in time and and and
and use that dynamic, because.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Boy would I have used the shit out of that.
Help help, I'm being oppressed.

Speaker 5 (53:39):
More.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
How many of these conservative figures have spent so long
decrying things like DEEI, people getting things that they haven't deserved.

(54:01):
You know, suck it up, buttercop work hard, dah da,
d da, nobody cares about your feelings.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
But also this girl deserves an.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
A yeah, tales all his time, you know what about
her feelings.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
So Dusty Deavers, Oklahoma state senator, released a statement saying
that he believed FULNECKI was given a low grade because
the instructor was offended, and again he said that the
issue raises serious First Amendment concerns, saying that it's looking
a lot like unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by a state actor.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
It really isn't, I mean, that's sorry, Dusty Deavers, It's
really not.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
But I guess that's my point is that it's totally
fine for her to not be happy with the grade
that she got. I wouldn't be happy if I don't.
Nobody likes getting bad grades. But making this an issue
where the governor and your state senator are weighing in,
I don't think helps anybody. And this is just my
opinion based on my own sense of health. Stuff like

(54:56):
this usually goes in media, but I think this whole
thing is is essentially a false flag. Do you know
the phrase rat fucking?

Speaker 3 (55:04):
Unfortunately, as an American living in the twenty first century,
I am intimately familiar with rat fucking.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
So for folks who don't know, rat fucking is kind
of behind the scenes, covert political sabotage or political dirty trick.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
I've described that more or less correctly.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Right, Yeah, that sounds generally consistent with my understanding of it.
You got all these disingenuous actors playing political games, fucking
rats behind the scenes.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
So I think that she wrote this essay on purpose
with the intention of contacting turning points.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Usay.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Fox News has sort of become the latest right wing
grievance celebrity. Bull Necki's mother, Christy Bolnecki, is a lawyer
who defended a number of January sixth rioters and once
sued the public school system to force the school to
go back to doing in person schooling during COVID.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
I am unwilling to believe that that is not part
of this.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
As Parker Maloy of The present Age Newsletter points out,
Bolnicki's mom is retweeting posts that say things like, quote,
if you claim to be a transgender, you should be
banned from working at any school. Transgenderism is a mental illness,
and quote individuals who identify as trans should be automatically
disqualified from holding any position as teacher or professor. To

(56:23):
that last one, the post that was explicitly calling for
employment discrimination against all trans people, Christy Samantha's mom replied
and said, agreed, proud of my daughter. So, as Parker
Malloy points out, like that really is the tell. This
is not about this one class, or this one paper,
or even about this one trans instructor quote, because the

(56:45):
family is not arguing that this particular grading decision was wrong.
They're in fact celebrating their daughter's role in a broader
campaign to make trans people unemployable. The discrimination complaint, the
media tour, the outrage. It is all in service of
the stated very plainly in the posts that Christy Fulnecki
is boosting trans people should not be allowed to work

(57:07):
in education. So I completely agree with Performerloy here. It
is not really about this one paper, because the larger
point is about pushing trans people out of education and
creating a climate of fear where trans folks just feel like, oh,
I better just keep my head down because I don't
want to be the next, you know, right wing villain
because I did my job in a classroom.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Absolutely, they've been doing it for years now, and they've
got like a well oiled machine of targeting individual, hapless
trans people who happen to get caught up in their crosshairs.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
As Malloy puts it, this is an industry now. There
are jobs, salaries, speaker bureaus, and career tracks. The right
is always looking for new faces to put on this movement,
Young photogenic people who can be positioned as victims of
trans overreach. The d transitioner who regrets her surgery, the
swimmer who tied with a transwoman, the Christian student whose
essay got a bad grade. Samantha Fullnecki fits the profile.

(58:04):
She's a college student, she's Christian, she wrote about her
faith and got a bad grade from a trans instructor.
It doesn't matter that the essay was genuinely bad, that
two instructors agreed on the assessment, that the feedback was
professional and patient, or that the grading rubric supports a decision.
The narrative rights itself. Trans professor fails Christian student for
quoting the Bible. What full Necki's mother is saying out
loud that trans people should not be allowed to teach

(58:26):
at all is what this movement actually wants. The individual
controversies are just vehicles to get there. Each one is
designed to make an example of a trans person, to
signal to every other trans person in education, or healthcare,
or any public facing role. This could happen to you
keep your head down better yet leave. And when we
look at what's actually happening with this case, what Parker

(58:48):
Maloy describes there is already happening. The investigation is not
even concluded as of our recording this, but already the
Oklahoma House of Representatives District ninety eight has honored Samantha
Fullnecki with a citation of recognition. She's also doing a
speaking engagement with Turning Points USA and was already on
Fox News. So exactly what Parker Maloy describes, this is

(59:09):
becoming an industry that essentially mints, telegenic, young, aggrieved right wingers.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
We're already seeing that machinery turn in front of our eyes.

Speaker 3 (59:21):
Yeah, it's big business. It gets a lot of clicks,
it gets a lot of TV views. I wouldn't even
begin to know all the ways that they're making money
off of this, but they definitely are.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
And we can't not mention that all of this is
happening in Oklahoma, which has been, I guess, something of
a test ground for anti trans and transphobic policies in education.
We've talked about this before, but Chaia Rachik, who runs
the libs of TikTok account, was given a role in
the Oklahoma Department of Education's Library Media Advisory Committee, even
though she does not live in Oklahoma, has never lived

(59:53):
in Oklahoma, has no connection to the state, has no
background or credentials in education.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
She's actually a realtor.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
She's just some one one who runs social media accounts
and hates trans people and that's enough to be given
a position within Oklahoma's public education.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Yeah, Oklahoma, they've really If you remember a couple of
years ago, there were a bunch of right when you
was like running for and winning school boards, and I
think a lot of that took place in Oklahoma too.
So it's not just the university level, but even like
K twelve, education has really had this very strong influence

(01:00:34):
from these political Christian types who really, much like Samantha's essay,
value vague moralizing that is in some way possibly connected
to the Bible over evidence or facts like That's it's

(01:00:56):
a whole approach to education that they have really been
pushing in that state. Unfortunately for the children who live there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Yeah, it's not going well because they're consistently ranked pretty
low in public education. So I don't think it's necessarily
working for the people who are.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Looking to be educated in the state.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
And working great for lives of TikTok Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Really working good for them.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
And this is also where the governor, Kevin Stitt, has
signed a slew of anti trans bills, things like banning
gender affirming care bills to keep trans kids out of sports,
you know, bills barring trans kids from using bathrooms consistent
to their gender identity, things like that. Right, So I
don't think this is a coincidence. It's happening in Oklahoma
at all. And so the latest on this case is

(01:01:43):
that the University of Oklahoma Graduate Student Senate passed and
resolution calling on the university to provide more transparency regarding
the administrative leave and additional protection for graduate teaching assistant
in course investigations. During a meeting, the Graduate Student Senate said,
if these accusations were upheld, external employers and academic institutions
could reasonably conclude that OU grants grades and degrees without

(01:02:06):
requiring students to demonstrate genuine learning through coursework, exams, and
honest evaluation. The resolution read upholding these claims would call
into question the value and credibility of an OU degree,
suggesting that academic outcomes can be influenced by unfounded accusations
rather than merit. In making this appeal to the University administration,
the Graduate Student Senate stands in solidarity with the Graduate

(01:02:28):
Student instructor and will continue to advocate for their rights,
their safety, and their well being. The Ways and Means
Committee chair Sam Jensen, who authored this bill, said that
he is aware that this graduate student has received death
threats and harassment because of this situation. They say that
we are asking the university to condemn that behavior and
to step up their protections for the entire university community.
The resolution is also calling on the university to disclose

(01:02:50):
the procedures during the investigation and explain in detail why
the instructor was placed on leave, and to formally apologize
for the instructor for the bullying that they receive. And that, really,
I think is a good point that how quickly this
is somebody who had previously just won an award for
how good of a teacher they were, how easily and
how quickly the university just throws them away at the

(01:03:14):
first blush of any kind of grievance that you know,
might make them a right wing villain. And to me,
it underscores the importance of things like a graduate student
union or a TA union, you know, so that you
aren't just abandoned with no one to advocate for your protections.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
Yeah, nowhere in the summary of actions by the university
doesn't seem like they have the instructors back, right, They
just like first thing, put the instructor on leave, let
the student know that they won't be penalized, effectively undercutting
the grade that the instructor had given the students. And

(01:03:53):
something that was mentioned in that resolution from their student Senate,
which I think is a really important point, is that
there's there's no emphasis on learning here, Like the whole
point of classes in university education is to learn. Is
for students to learn stuff from their instructors, not to

(01:04:17):
boldly proclaim their religious opinions and get rewarded for it.
I feel like that really gets lost a lot when
talking about these kinds of cases.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Yes, I read this op ed in The Times called
how one student's failing grade became a cause celebrat on
the right that basically lays that out.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
Here's how they put it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
Culture warriors like ful Necki and the Oklahoma conservative politicians
supporting her are immediately taking advantage of a decade's long trend,
and higher education students think they are customers who deserve
to be catered to, rather than curious humans who might
have something to learn. With the Trump administration going to
war with universities and Oklahoma's Freedom Caucus, a group of

(01:05:00):
right wing state legislators to crying oh used descent into
radical activism and demanding a public apology to Samantha Polniki
while threatening a funding cut. You can see how hard
it is for even the most stalwart college presidents to
stand up for the principles of academic freedom. Inside Higher
Ed does an annual Student Voice survey that polls thousands
of current college students from across the country, and this

(01:05:22):
year's result showed that sixty five percent of college students
consider themselves customers of their institution in some capacity, defined
in the survey as expecting to have their needs met
and be empathized with because they are paying tuitions and fees.
So that is exactly what you're talking about, right, that
this idea that you know, college is just a customer

(01:05:46):
service experience where you pay tuition and you get a
grade that you want, and not a place where there's
an expectation.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
That you would do any actual learning and growing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
And I think ultimately like that is the goal of
people like Turning Points USA. They want to break trust
in education, to make every classroom essentially a battlefield and every.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Teacher potentially a villain.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
The real tragedy here is that it does not just
hurt faculty, which it absolutely does, you know, especially faculty
that doesn't have tenure. If you're an adjunct or a
TA a lot, you might have a lot less productions,
So it hurts those faculty, but it also hurt students.
Like if we stop expecting students to be able to
engage with evidence, to build arguments, to revise and challenge
their thinking, what exactly is it that they're supposed to

(01:06:32):
be doing in college? Like what are they paying tuition for?
But I think that is really the point here, to
devalue education to the point where it is just an
exchange of money for grades, not a place where young
people are expected to do any actual learning. Well, Mike,
thank you for filming through this with me. Maybe I'll
see you in the classroom.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
Yeah, thanks for having me here, Bridget it was fun
to talk about teaching. And I hope that instructor is okay.
And I hope Samanth the at some point in the
future looks back on this whole experience with deep shame
and regret.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can read us at
Hello at Tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.
It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,

(01:07:31):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Us on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
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