EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Dig or detest her essay, Samantha Fulnecky didn’t deserve a ‘zero’ based on the assignment’s parameters
The story of University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky has gone viral over the last week; she filed a discrimination complaint after getting a “zero” on a “reaction” paper from her instructor, a transgender grad student named Mel Curth.
Note that “reaction” paper. That’s a little important, as that word opens up a lot of room for opinion and subjectivity. And in case you don’t believe the assignment actually said “reaction,” here it is — literally in the title:
Based on these grading parameters, there’s no way Fulnecky should’ve received absolutely no credit for the assignment — especially given Curth deducts 10 points if a paper is between 620 and 649 words … and the full 25 points if it has less than 620. Which are rather arbitrary.
Fulnecky told The Oklahoma Lion that “this was not the first time this type of reaction assignment” was given by Curth. “The topic may have changed,” The Lion notes, “but [Fulnecky’s] writing did not. This would, however, be the first time she received a zero in this course for this same type of work. So what changed?”
Good question.
Princeton University’s Charlie Yale (pictured), an assistant opinion editor at the student paper The Daily Princetonian who’s studying gender and sexuality studies, inaccurately blasts Fulnecky’s paper as unresponsive and lacking evidence, and says she should have met with Curth one-on-one to discuss the matter before anything else.
It’s a legit point, but would it have solved anything?
According to The Lion, probably not. In his remarks about her paper, Curth called Fulnecky’s characterization of transgenderism “offensive” (which, ironically, “disqualifies his own reasoning and argument” for giving Fulnecky the zero).
Yale also worries about how “right-wing media” — which supposedly has an “obsession” with things higher ed — jumped on the case, and how such vigilance ultimately affects academic freedom and “damages [universities’] good-faith, truth-seeking mission.”
He then tells students that “your professors aren’t out to get you.”
Is that an accurate assessment? From where would conservatives have gotten such a notion?
Could it be the vast disparity in university professors’ political affiliations … a gap enormous enough to make almost three-quarters of Republican students not discuss their political views?
Or perhaps it’s stuff like professors’ tenuous-sanity-laden social media posts following Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
For instance, I’m fairly certain University of Alabama English Professor Candice Hale handled it straight up with right-leaning students; she only wrote re: Kirk “I do not mourn oppressors. I do not show them empathy. I don’t give a damn about evil racist, fascist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, mediocre, white men …” Right?
Ditto the University of Arkansas-Little Rock’s Felicia Branch who had penned “It never fails. People have come out caping for the devil that walked among us […] so no. I will not pull back from CELEBRATING that an evil man died by the method he chose to embrace.”
And when finger-giving, Nazi-calling Fort Lewis College Prof. Emeritus David Kozak (pictured) was still teaching, you totally get the vibe he was impartial when dealing with right-of-center students, yes?
Yale yet wants his progressive peers to help him circle the wagons when it comes to such instructors: “It is up to us, as students, to build an environment that values academic freedom and spurns demagogic attempts to discredit our professors in bad faith.”
These professors discredit themselves.
MORE: University forced to state explicitly that conservatives are welcome on campus
