The University of Oklahoma finally made the right call this weekend, and it only took a student getting slapped with a zero for citing the Bible in a psychology paper to get there.
Last Thursday, Turning Point USA OU laid out what happened to freshman Samantha Fulnecky. She was assigned a 650-word reaction essay about how society perceives gender roles. Fulnecky did exactly that.
She argued that traditional gender roles shouldn’t automatically be labeled “stereotypes” and said removing gender entirely from society would take us “farther from God’s original plan.”
You may agree or disagree with her beliefs.
That’s not the issue.
The issue is that instructor Mel Curtis, a graduate student and transgender professor in the program, responded by giving her a zero out of 25 and then accusing her of being “offensive.”
Not “off-topic.”
Not “needs revision.”
A complete, nuclear-grade failure for expressing a viewpoint the instructor disliked.
Curtis even told her it was offensive to call an entire group of people “demonic” — an interpretation based on Curtis’s reading of her religious argument, not an actual violation of the assignment. The comment read more like a personal rebuke than academic feedback.
This wasn’t grading.
It was gatekeeping.
And it’s exactly why conservative students at OU stay quiet in class. They know professors can preach about “inclusion” during lecture but throw the book away when a student’s faith doesn’t align with campus orthodoxy.
So when TPUSA OU blasted the decision — saying OU shouldn’t be letting ideologically unstable instructors near undergrads — it hit a nerve. They weren’t the only ones noticing what was going on.
By Sunday night, OU had shifted out of neutral and into full damage-control mode. In a sharply worded statement, university officials said they take First Amendment concerns seriously, especially religious freedom.
More importantly, they said they had already “acted swiftly” once Fulnecky’s complaint was filed.
And here’s the headline: The instructor has been placed on administrative leave.
Good.
That is the exact, appropriate response when a grading decision crosses from academic evaluation into ideological punishment.
OU confirmed that the formal grade-appeals process had been activated and that steps were taken to ensure the student faced no academic harm from the zero. A full-time professor has now taken over the course for the rest of the semester. The university also said Fulnecky’s complaint of religious discrimination is now under official review.
All of these are the right steps — and frankly, overdue ones.
Because this wasn’t a “difference of opinion.”
It wasn’t a debate about methodology.
It was a case of an instructor using their authority to shut down a student’s religious viewpoint.
When a professor — graduate student or not — hands out zeros to students purely because their faith-informed view is “offensive,” that’s not teaching. It’s activism. And it has no place in a university classroom funded by taxpayers and built on the promise of open inquiry.
Suspending the instructor is not punitive.
It’s protective for students, for academic standards, and for OU’s credibility.
OU did the right thing here.
Now, the school needs to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.