When University of Oklahoma junior Samantha Fulnecky wrote an essay disagreeing with the idea that there are more than two genders, she says she wasn’t trying to provoke her class instructor, a man who identifies as a transgender woman.

“I didn’t even know—until everything came out in the media about this and other people found out—that he was transgender,” Fulnecky said. “I didn’t know that. And I also didn’t care because it was an online class. I was like, ‘I don’t need to know who my professor is because it’s just online. I never had to interact with him or anything. I just did the work and moved on. I had no idea.”

This semester, Fulnecky enrolled in Developmental Psychology (2603), which the OU course catalog describes as a survey “of the psychological changes across the life span” that discusses “the changes in cognitive, social and emotional physiological development from conception to death.”

For a recent assignment, students were asked to respond to an assigned article discussing the alleged teasing or bullying of gender-atypical kids and associated negative mental health outcomes.

The guidelines for the assignment asked students to write a 650-word “reaction paper” that provided a “thoughtful discussion of some aspect of the article.” Among the “possible approaches” suggested was to explain why a student thought the subject of the article was, or was not, worthy of study or to explain how the study applied to a student’s own experiences.

The assignment was not a research paper requiring citation of outside sources.

In her essay, Fulnecky wrote, “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. It is important to use the freedom of speech we have been 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.”

Fulnecky also stated, “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. The Bible says that our lives are not our own but that our lives and bodies belong to the Lord for His glory.”

Fulnecky said her essay was not designed to provoke the course’s transgender instructor but instead simply reflected her honest reaction.

“It was really natural for me, especially with a controversial topic like that,” Fulnecky said. “I have a very strong opinion on it, stronger than anything I’ve been asked to write about in that class.”

Fulnecky was given a zero for the assignment.

The course instructor, graduate student Mel Curth, who reportedly identifies as a transgender woman and uses “she/they” pronouns, responded to Fulnecky’s essay by claiming it “contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.”

Curth claimed that “this isn’t a vague narrative of ‘society pushes lies,’ but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved.”

“You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn’t change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed,” Curth wrote.

Fulnecky spoke about the incident at the Dec. 3 meeting of the OCPAC Foundation and in a separate interview with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.

While some critics have suggested the essay did not meet course expectations, Fulnecky said reaction essays have been “assigned all semester,” although prior assignments were “over pretty mild topics, not ever anything like this.”

Previous reaction essays have been written about articles noting how early childhood experiences affect childhood development and gene expression, how interaction with siblings and the number of siblings in a family can affect a child’s brain, and similar topics.

Fulnecky received perfect scores for all her prior reaction essays in the class and had a 97 average prior to the reaction essay on gender identity. Fulnecky said she was never required to cite outside sources in any prior essays, and reaction essays have been assigned roughly every two weeks of the semester.

Notably, another reason cited by an OU instructor for Fulnecky’s failing grade appears to be based on alleged harm to classmates that did not occur.

Megan Waldron, another graduate student instructor with oversight of the course, wrote to Fulnecky, saying, “I concur with Mel on the grade you received.” Waldron said Fulnecky’s essay “directly and harshly criticizes your peers and their opinions, which are just as valuable as yours. Disagreeing with others is fine, but there is a respectful way to go about it. That goes for discussion posts as well as reaction papers.”

Waldron also lists her pronouns in communications.

However, Fulnecky noted that students in the online course do not view other students’ essays, meaning there is no way for other students to be offended.

“No one else read it,” Fulnecky said.

The incident gained national attention after Fulnecky went public.

OU announced that Curth has been placed on administrative leave while the incident is investigated and that the school “takes seriously concerns involving First Amendment rights, certainly including religious freedoms.”

Fulnecky said the nationwide publicity and associated reaction have been “crazy,” noting she has received negative backlash from various individuals on social media, many of whom are not from Oklahoma.

But Fulnecky said she has also received many comments of support that have “been really encouraging,” including from other students who say they have experienced similar discrimination.

“I’ve gotten a lot of responses from people that go to OU, a lot of my (sorority) sisters and things, saying that they’re dealing with the same things in their classes and that they’ve had professors that are treating them the same way,” Fulnecky said. “So it definitely shows that this wasn’t just a one-time thing where they just happened to hire someone who didn’t know what they were doing. It sounds like it’s a huge problem at OU that no one’s talking about.”

The incident has drawn strong reaction from many state officials, including some lawmakers who say it may be time to reassess state funding for OU and other colleges.

Members of the legislative Freedom Caucus recently issued a press release decrying “OU’s descent into radical activism” and calling for the Legislature to cut funding to the university system if corrective action is not taken.

“Oklahoma taxpayers should not continue bankrolling indoctrination mills that violate the First Amendment,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Shane Jett, a Shawnee Republican in the Oklahoma Senate, said in the release.

During the OCPAC (Oklahoma Constitutional Principles Affecting Culture) Foundation meeting, Jett said he is not satisfied with OU’s response so far.

“They didn’t fix the problem,” Jett said. “The university is the problem. And the dearth of leadership, from the president down, is the problem.”

Many of Fulnecky’s critics have decried and mocked her willingness to discuss her Christian faith in a reaction essay. Fulnecky urged her defenders to show compassion to those critics.

“People say that because they don’t know the truth,” Fulnecky said. “That’s why people have the responses that they do is because they haven’t had an encounter with Jesus. And because they don’t know him personally, they don’t know the truth; they don’t have the Holy Spirit. So, we can’t hold them to the same standards that we hold ourselves to because they don’t have the Holy Spirit, so they just don’t know what they don’t know. So, it’s unfortunate that people think that Christianity is stupid, that the Bible is stupid and that it’s all just some made-up story. I’ve read all of those things, and it’s comforting to know that the God of the universe has set all of these things and orchestrated all of these things and that He’s ultimately the one defending us.”