An OU student says a failing grade on her essay citing the Bible violated her free speech rights. Instructors said the essay lacked empirical evidence.

This is a huge meltdown in conservative circles, and considering how spineless the OU administration is, they’ll probably end up nixing the professor. They are currently working on getting rid of the African American studies department as is.

  • danc4498@lemmy.worldEnglish
    82·
    2 hours ago

    My take, the whole thing is stupid. Everybody’s an asshole.

    The instructions for the assignment said students were evaluated on three criteria: Does the paper show a clear tie-in to the assigned article? Does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary? Is the paper clearly written?

    She received 0 points. This wasn’t a graduate level psychology course. She was a junior. Honestly, the professor should be happy she wrote the paper herself instead of AI at that level. Based on the instructions (described in the link below), seemed like she did the assignment, but the professor just disagreed with her opinion and way overreacted. She got just as many points as if she didn’t even do the assignment. That is harsh.

    Fulnecky emailed Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, OU’s president, the dean of her college, members of the media and Walters’ conservative anti-teachers’ union group fewer than four hours after her instructor justified Fulnecky’s grade. Four days later, Fulnecky went through the university’s internal process to file a formal discrimination complaint and an academic appeal.

    But also, her reaction was to email the fucking governor and everybody else on god’s green earth. They have a grade appeal process, but her entitled ass went straight to the governor crying about discrimination. Just because you and your professor disagree a the validity of fairytales doesn’t make you some sad little victim. I’m tired of Christian’s, of all people, whining about discrimination. Freedom of religion doesn’t mean you should be allowed to push your BS fairytale onto other people and get praised for it. Appeal your grade and STFU.

    Here’s another article with more details:

    https://archive.is/2025.11.26-002811/https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/25/ou-oklahoma-student-bible-essay-free-speech-gender-roles/87376745007/

    • LordMayor@piefed.socialEnglish
      92·
      2 hours ago

      Does the paper…

      They were clearly expected to use scholarly research. Using the Bible—or Harry Potter, Wikipedia, last nights weather forecast—should be an automatic 0.

      • danc4498@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 hour ago

        It was a reaction paper. Give me your reaction to this article. It was not a research paper where you were expected to cite sources. This person’s reaction was inspired by the bible. They can be wrong, but doesn’t mean they didn’t follow the assignment.

        Automatic 0 is insane. I have taken undergrad psychology courses in my day. Literally you get an A for effort. This professor was triggered and took it out on the student.

        I wish the student had gone theory the appeal process before blowing it the fuck up. But it was obviously more important to get the attention than the grade.

    • Saprophyte@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 hours ago

      It’s difficult to judge Fulnecky’s situation without knowing the full facts and internal operations within her psychology course, Shibley explained, which is an example of how difficult things can get when politics become involved in the academic process.

      Best quote from the article. Honestly it seems like the professor and the student are both way overreacting and more concerned about politics than what each other is even saying. She said an idea was demonic he accused her of calling half the population demonic. He said she missed 1 of the 3 criteria and to 0 out of 25, she blew up and emailed the governor in response to her grade.

      This is one of those cases that’ll end up at the SCOTUS and they’ll rule on something only vaguely related to force Bibles to be used in all academic papers.