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Oklahomans are ‘fed up’ with bias against conservatives and Christians in higher ed, senator says
The University of Oklahoma is facing the threat of funding cuts from a group of state lawmakers after a Christian student received a failing grade for a paper about why she opposes modern gender ideology.
Sen. Kendal Sacchieri, R-Blanchard, told The College Fix that public universities’ funding should be cut if they cannot protect free speech or religious liberty.
“My district is loud, along with many others, that they are fed up with seeing no real punishments being issued when we see Christians and conservatives be targeted and punished on our campuses,” she said in an email Wednesday.
Sacchieri and other members of the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus are demanding the public university apologize to junior Samantha Fulnecky and reverse the failing grade she received for her psychology essay.
Fulnecky’s situation has attracted national attention. Earlier this semester, she said she wrote an essay for a psychology class that was graded by Mel Curth, a graduate student who identifies as transgender, The Oklahoman reports.
The assignment asked students to react to an article about gender stereotypes, including “why you feel the topic is important and worthy of study (or not)” and how the study applies “to your own experiences,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
Fulnecky “wrote that traditional gender roles should not be considered stereotypes,” according to the report. She also brought up her biblical views that modern gender ideology distances people “from God’s original plan for humans.”
“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,” she wrote in the essay.
She received a zero.
Curth told Fulnecky the reason for her failing grade was that she did not use “empirical evidence,” and parts of the essay were offensive, the OU Turning Point USA chapter wrote in a recent X post.
“To call an entire group of people ‘demonic’ is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population,” Curth wrote, according to the conservative student group.
In response, Fulnecky filed a discrimination complaint to the university, alleging the grade violated her religious freedom.
On Sunday, the university responded in a statement that Curth has been placed on leave, and administrators are reviewing the complaint.
“The University of Oklahoma takes seriously concerns involving First Amendment rights, certainly including religious freedom,” it stated. “The college acted immediately to address the academic issue raised by the student. College leaders contacted her on the day her letter was received and have maintained regular communication throughout the process.”
Curth declined to comment when contacted by The Fix this week, citing advice from an attorney.
The university’s media relations office did not respond to several emails this week, asking for details about the situation and its response to lawmakers’ concerns.
Meanwhile, the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus leaders are demanding more from the university.
Sacchieri told The Fix lawmakers are working on trying to schedule a meeting with the university’s Board of Regents next week.
“What I would like to see happen is OU to issue an outright apology to Stephanie and to see OU and all of my state funded higher ed campuses take seriously the fact that there is a bias,” she said.
For another caucus member, the situation represents a larger problem with the current state of higher education and its pursuit of truth.
“Men and women are created and wired differently. This is a basic truth that, deep down, everyone – even the instructor who gave the student a zero – knows is true. To punish students for these views is blatant anti-Christian hostility and anti-truth activism,” Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, told The Fix in an email Wednesday.
What happened to Fulnecky isn’t an isolated incident either. The senator brought up a situation a few months ago when an Oklahoma State University student government representative tried “to intimidate a student out of wearing a TPUSA hat given to him by Charlie Kirk.”
Oklahoma’s public universities receive hundreds of millions of tax dollars each year. But, unless reform happens, the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus leaders believe that funding needs to be cut.
“If we need to start having conversations about withholding funding to get these universities’ attention, then maybe that’s what we need to consider,” Deevers told The Fix.
Sacchieri also expressed frustration with the universities’ inaction in response to on-going concerns about bias against conservatives, DEI, and more. She believes it’s time for lawmakers to use the power of the purse to force change.
“Working alongside the Freedom Caucus, I will be demanding from my leadership that we cut state funding for higher education institutions until free speech and religious liberty are protected for our conservative and Christian students,” she told The Fix.
The caucus also is calling for a legislative audit of “ideological bias” in curriculum, grading practices, and hiring at state higher education institutions.
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