BUZZ
The University of Oklahoma placed a second faculty member on leave late last week in connection to the controversy over a Christian student receiving a zero grade for expressing her biblical views in a paper about gender.
Kelli Alvarez, an assistant professor who teaches freshmen composition classes, allegedly offered to excuse students to attend a protest in support of transgender teaching assistant Mel Curth, Inside Higher Ed reports.
However, Alvarez did not offer to excuse students who “express a counter-viewpoint,” the university said in a statement Friday.
The professor’s actions last week were “inappropriate and wrong,” and Alvarez was “replaced, effective immediately, for the remainder of the semester,” the public university stated.
“Classroom instructors have a special obligation to ensure that the classroom is never used to grant preferential treatment based on personal political beliefs, nor to pressure students to adopt particular political or ideological views,” the university stated.
Alvarez did not immediately respond to an email from The College Fix asking for her view of the situation and her next steps moving forward.
Curth, a graduate student, was placed on leave earlier this month for allegedly discriminating against student Samantha Fulnecky’s Christian beliefs by giving her essay a zero grade, The Fix reported last week.
The situation has drawn widespread attention and calls from some Republican lawmakers to defund higher education institutions that fail to protect free speech and 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,” Sen. Kendal Sacchieri, R-Blanchard, told The Fix last week.
She and other members of the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus are demanding the public university apologize to Fulnecky and reverse the failing grade she received for her psychology essay.
Fulnecky, a junior, recently spoke more about the situation with College Fix reporter Hannah Brady, including how she is handling the responses to her essay both on and off campus.
She also spoke about the importance of students standing up for their beliefs.
“It can be scary, of course, to be bold in your faith and to stand up for what you believe in, but it’s so important,” Fulnecky said when asked what her message would be to other Christian college students.
“Ultimately, we’re only living to glorify God, and I’m only doing this to glorify God,” she said.
MORE: Lawmakers demand changes at U. Oklahoma after student’s Bible essay got a zero
