(RNS) — As a longtime grader of college students’ papers (ret.), I am irresistibly drawn to the hullabaloo over the zero grade University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky received last month on a 650-word paper Fulnecky wrote for her psychology class.
A junior psych major who had done well in the course up to that point, Fulnecky lodged a formal complaint with the university that the grade violated her free speech rights. In response, the university quashed the grade and put the teacher, a graduate student at OU, on administrative leave.
This being the world we live in, Fulnecky brought her treatment to the attention of the campus chapter of Turning Point USA, the Christian campus organization co-founded by Charlie Kirk. TPUSA immediately turned her into a national cause célèbre. She also contacted Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s former superintendent of public instruction, now CEO of Teacher Freedom Alliance, a “non-union alternative for public school teachers,” who called her “an American hero.”
Calling the situation “gravely concerning,” Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt tweeted to announce that he was “calling on the OU regents to review the results of the investigation & ensure other students aren’t unfairly penalized for their beliefs.” Meanwhile, OU students turned out to support the suspended instructor.
Herewith, as a public service, I offer an account of how the grade came about.
For the class, Developmental Psychology, students had to read an assigned article and show that they’d done so with “a thoughtful reaction to the material,” such as via:
- 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 other behaviors
- Linking the objectives or findings from the assigned article to other domains of development or other findings that we read about or discuss in class
- A suggestion for further studies or experiments that might help researchers better understand the topic being studied
- Alternative interpretations of the researchers’ findings
- A discussion of how development in this domain might proceed differently at other developmental stages
- Your own thoughts about how development proceeds in the domain being researched in the article
The paper would be graded on a 25-point scale: 10 points on making a “clear link” to the article discernible by a reader; 10 points “reflecting a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article rather than a summary”; and 5 points on “clarity of writing.”
The assigned article, by two University of Kentucky psychologists, was “Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence,” which appeared in the peer-reviewed quarterly “Social Development” in 2014. It describes a research project whose aim was to determine:
(1) whether typical characteristics are associated with being popular, (2) whether atypical characteristics are associated with rejection/teasing, (3) whether the degree of typicality is associated with the degree of popularity, and (4) whether teasing due to gender atypicality explains the link between low levels of typicality and more negative mental health.
Eighty-four students at a public middle school were asked various questions about peers in the abstract and about themselves and their classmates. It turned out that the girls did not hold each other to as high a level of typicality as the boys held each other: e.g. that being considered “athletic” or “independent” (not typical girls’ traits) did not detract from girls’ popularity. But overall, the “important gender distinction” discerned by the study was:
For boys, being perceived by peers as high in gender typicality, and perceiving oneself to be high in gender typicality, was associated with more popularity and likeability, less gender-based teasing, and more positive mental health outcomes. For girls, being perceived by peers as high in gender typicality was associated with more popularity and likeability, but more negative body image and greater anxiety.
In other words, more typical girls turned out to be more stressed, including about how they look, than more typical boys. Not an uninteresting result, I’d say, and one worth reflecting on. But then there’s Samantha’s paper. Here’s the key paragraph:
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 lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth. I do not want kids to be teased or bullied in school. However, pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth and everyone can do whatever they want and be whoever they want is not biblical whatsoever.
Nothing in the article encourages acceptance of diverse gender expressions as a way to improve students’ confidence. It doesn’t mention confidence at all, and in fact indicates, wholly for boys and partially for girls, positive outcomes for typical “gender expressions.” It is silent on multiple genders and the idea everyone should do whatever they want.
In short, instead of discussing what the article actually had to say, Samantha used the subject of gender typicality as an occasion to present her understanding of the biblical view of gender. In her view, it was because of that view that she got the zero.
Explaining the grade, her teacher began, “Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point[s] for you posting a reaction paper that does 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.”
Samantha might have argued that the persistence of “typicality” norms among middle schoolers shows that such norms are inherent to gender and that societal pressure for girls to be less feminine (i.e. more athletic and independent) has been harmful to their mental health. That would have enabled her to use her biblical perspective to discuss why “the topic is important and worthy of study” (item No. 1 above) or to provide “an alternative interpretation of the researchers’ findings” (item No. 6), thereby doing the assignment. But she didn’t.
Whether a student at a public university can be marked down for being offensive is, admittedly, a closer question. According to the ACLU, “Inside the classroom, speech can be constrained to topics relevant to a class’s stated scope and subject to rules promoting civil dialogue and learning.” Is a reaction paper “inside the classroom”?
Be that as it may, Samantha’s teacher deserves reinstatement. I’m dubious that the university will concur, but hope springs eternal.
