politics

FTA:

A psychology student at the University of Oklahoma says the failing grade she received on an essay where she cited the Bible was a violation of her right to free speech. Her instructors said she failed to use empirical evidence and called parts of her essay offensive.

In her essay, which was in response to an article about how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender, junior Samantha Fulnecky wrote that traditional gender roles should not be considered stereotypes, according to an earlier Oklahoman report. She cited the Bible to support her stance that eliminating gender in society would be "detrimental" because that would put people "farther from God's original plan for humans."

It's psychology, not religious studies. She got a failing grade because she said thing and used a shitty source to back it up. Psychology is not religious studies.

A psychology student at the University of Oklahoma says the failing grade she received on an essay where she cited the Bible was a violation of her right to free speech.

Bitch, you clearly don't know what that means. People will literally eat shit just for 2 minutes of fame.

“ how dare you fail me for handing in a shitty paper full of delusions?! “

It's possible her essay was just bad, with or without the bible thumping. And the inclusion of the bible could have been strategic. Some students will try anything to avoid a bad grade, except writing a good essay.

Her problem is she cited the wrong bible!

Clearly, she should've cited the real bible that has the true word of the gods in it. Not that atheist Christian bible!

Remember: If you don't believe in my gods, you're an atheist!

the fact that this is even a controversy goes to show how brain rotted such a huge amount of people is, its absolutely baffling

Oh for fucks sake.

These people whining about how oppressed they are for being xtians are just so very insufferable. Just because they ran into someone that doesn't put their precious chosen lifestyle on a pedestal and clap for name-dropping their little book club... 🙄

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 on 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/

As others have noted, both student and teacher are kinda awful. The student for obvious reasons, but the teachers assignment and grading isn't really best practice, especially if you give a 0 when there's literally any rubric you grade to (and you want that for anything you're grading seriously).

I teach psychology courses at University level and for written parts you really have two acceptable options. Important papers (e.g. final essays worth 20% of total grade) should always have a rubric-- these you can very much give a bad grade to a student who clearly doesn't understand what peer reviewed evidence is because evidence might be a 20pt rubric item and without it, an A drops to a C (and that's assuming everything else is perfect). Having it in writing protects you legally.

The other, much more common assignment like a reaction piece, is mostly to check for participation in reading an assigned reading. There's usually no rubric and it's scored for completion so there isn't any subjective side to it. Quote the Bible or whatever, it's like a participation grade to encourage reading and if you have a bad take, whatever. These are usually 1% of the grade and there's usually one every week to keep up with.

Doing anything in-between opens you up to problems, not to mention it's just unfair to students. If you follow a rubric, you almost never give a zero unless they just straight up cheated.

I read the assignment, the paper, and the instructor comments. The instructor is correct to give this a failing grade, however a zero was probably too harsh.

The criteria were:

1. Is there a clear link back to the assigned article? Can the reader assess whether the student has read the assigned article? (10 points)
2. Does the paper provide a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article, rather than a summary? (5 points)
3. Are the main ideas and thoughts organized into a coherent discussion? Is the writing clear enough to follow without multiple re-readings? (5 points)

These are not particularly tough criteria. It's an easy assignment aimed at ensuring students read a particular article and think about its contents. Here's how I think I'd grade it:

1. I skimmed the article myself. In 2020, I would have been pretty confident the student read it. In 2025, I can't be sure an LLM didn't summarize it for the student. I would expect more discussion of specific details from the article rather than a general overview of themes, especially now. 5/10.
2. The student definitely has plenty of her own reactions to the article in her paper, but all of them are based on religion rather than psychology. If she wrote that there's substantial reason to believe certain gendered behaviors are based on biology and instinct, and that going against those instincts causes stress, that's fine. In a more rigorous paper, she'd need to cite sources for that, but not here. She could even use the presence of gender norms in religious texts to argue that multiple cultures have discovered something similar to what she believes. She didn't though. She talked about her religious beliefs regarding gender. 4/10.
3. It's easy enough to follow her writing. 4/5.

13/25 (52%) is not usually a passing grade.

One grifter gets shot in the neck and two grow to take its place?

Bold move to file both discrimination and grade appeal at the same time while appealing to the Governor, Public Porn Watcher Ryan Walter & the group that hired the disgraced weirdo, and then the press.

Well citing fiction should get a failing grade.