00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.100Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.740Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:01:56.700We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.
00:01:58.860Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.
00:02:04.740The show is famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.
00:02:10.880We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.
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00:02:25.340There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:33.780I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:39.280As a former educator, we have got to talk about what's happening at the University of Oklahoma right now.
00:02:45.080So in this episode, we'll start with why I think we're uniquely qualified to weigh in.0.81
00:02:49.860You'll hear the full Bible-based paper whose failing grade was heard around the country and our thoughts on it, kind of treating it as a good faith assignment, but also why I think the entire thing is one big scam.0.94
00:04:38.580And, yeah, I was that person who there was an energy and an excitement from being around young learners that I have not felt replicated any place else in my in my career.
00:04:50.780So, yeah, I started out T.A. in grad school.
00:04:53.440I adjuncted. I taught writing courses all over D.C., Maryland and Virginia, including two different religious universities, a Catholic university and a seven day Adventist university.
00:05:02.560So I have graded a few papers that reference the Bible in my day.
00:05:07.400I got my job as a full-time instructor at Howard University here in D.C., go HU, where I taught for many years.
00:05:15.280I was also on what they call then the Enrichment Committee, which was sort of a cohort of instructors that basically had to stay abreast of the newest teaching methods to train other teachers to make sure that they were, you know, doing it the best way they could.
00:05:30.540So we both have spent, you know, done our hours in front of the classroom.
00:05:34.220Yeah, I actually got some teaching experience as an undergraduate.
00:05:40.100Me and a couple friends started a student club at Northeastern University to teach English as a second language to some of the staff on campus who were like janitorial or cafeteria workers who had recently come to Boston from other countries and didn't speak English.
00:05:58.460So that was a really fun and also challenging experience.
00:06:02.400And then when I got to Wisconsin for grad school, I TA'd several seminars, a couple big lectures, a couple smaller seminars, similar to the type of course that we're going to talk about in a little bit here, where it's like not an intro level course, but like what I would call a 200 level course,
00:06:26.640where you have to have taken like one or more super basic intro to psych courses to then be
00:06:34.100eligible to take something a little bit further into a specific topic, like, for example,
00:06:39.620psychology over the lifespan and how that changes. And those courses were always really fun
00:06:44.500to teach because they were focused enough that they are they have a particular topic. They're
00:06:50.420not trying to cover all of psychology, but they're open ended enough and introductory enough
00:06:56.560that you get to cover a lot of different things.
00:07:31.120But there were also grade grubbers who were like right on the borderline.
00:07:34.500I can still remember this one woman who was just really dissatisfied with the grade she got on a paper and came to office hours and I guess thought that, like, just continuing to stand her ground in my office and refusing to leave was somehow going to change her grade.
00:10:33.520And even though it's psychology, it's all writing.
00:10:36.000Like writing is the most fundamental skill for so many things.
00:10:42.920And absolutely, I think you were doing those students a kindness by not just passing them off to go to a higher level that they weren't ready for.
00:10:54.460Absolutely, people need to know how to write, especially if they're going to go into psychology or one of the social sciences where like writing is what you do, that the product is written works.
00:11:04.600Yes. So as two people who have failed our fair share of students over our teaching careers, I feel like we are qualified to weigh in on what's happening in Oklahoma. So here is what's going on.
00:11:17.220Samantha Fulnecki is a junior at University of Oklahoma.
00:11:20.760She turned in an assignment for a class called Lifespan Development in the psychology department.
00:11:25.680The course catalog described it as a survey of psychological changes across the lifespan,
00:11:31.100the changes in cognitive, social, emotional, and physiological development from conception to death.
00:11:38.260Mike, from being a psychologist and somebody who was in this space, you said it, I assumed it was a higher level course,
00:11:44.200But you said it was sort of like a mid-range course.
00:11:47.460Yeah, it's listed at the 2000 level, which I'm familiar with classes being like a 100 level is an introductory course.
00:11:54.820200 level is open to freshmen, sophomores who have completed their introduction to psychology course so that they can have some basic foundations on which to start learning about different topic areas.
00:12:09.080And so that's what this seemed to be. One of those courses that there was only one prerequisite listed, which was their equivalent to Introduction to Psychology. So what I assume is happening here, I'm not certain, but I assume that this was a course open to sophomores, freshmen who had taken Intro to Psychology and wanted to take additional psychology courses about topics.
00:12:33.760So not a high-level course, but one that people would take pretty early on in their college career is my sense based on looking at the course catalog.
00:12:43.520And according to OU Daily, Samantha is a psychology major.
00:12:47.180So this is, while it's not a high-level course, it's not an introductory course, and it's a course that is in her field of study, in her major.
00:12:54.520Yes, that's what seems to be the case.
00:12:56.780She seems to be wanting to be a psych major.
00:12:59.440Interestingly, at Wisconsin, you had to be a sophomore before you could declare to be a psych major.
00:13:06.140And you also had to pass this like pretty grueling, intensive research seminar that was essentially like a like a filter course.
00:13:18.080So I don't know if they have anything similar to that at Oklahoma.
00:13:22.160Oh, you want to be a psych major? How bad do you want it?
00:13:25.140Like, yeah, kind of, because because there's this phenomenon that like psychology, I mean, I'm a little bit biased, but it's just an inherently interesting domain, right?
00:13:35.580Like people are social. We think about other people. We think about ourselves.
00:13:40.380So a lot of the questions that psychology addresses are very accessible and familiar to lots of people.
00:13:45.560And that's why people are interested in psychology.
00:13:47.900That's why we have so many like pop psychology books and little like BuzzFeed style quizzes about what type of person you are.
00:13:55.360Just an inherently interesting thing. And so it attracts a lot of students, which is great.
00:14:00.700You know, I think it's wonderful for people of all persuasions and walks of life to learn more about psychology.
00:14:07.520But it attracts a lot of people to the major, some of whom are serious about psychology as a discipline in a social science.
00:14:14.320others who are not and think that those short little buzzfeed quizzes are like the pinnacle
00:14:21.800of psych when in fact they are not and the people who are taking it seriously are then going to go
00:14:27.360on to work through the courses work their way up towards a degree that then they will use towards
00:14:33.640some vocation related to psychology the people who are just approaching it as like interesting
00:14:39.980fluff that doesn't really require a whole lot of critical thought or taking time to
00:14:46.280understand the methods or understand the stats that are involved in learning things and
00:14:54.940having confidence in our conclusions, those folks should not be getting psychology degrees.
00:15:01.300They should just continue reading magazines.
00:15:08.240I mean, for their own good, like you said, you know, you don't want to give somebody a passing grade and send them onward when they don't have the skills to do what's currently in front of them.
00:15:19.800You don't want to just hand out psych degrees to anybody who wants them.
00:15:23.800I mean, if that's what you want, there are plenty of places where you can just buy a degree without putting in work online.
00:15:30.480During Trump's first term, he passed a bunch of rules that made that even easier.
00:15:37.260Like if you want to buy a psych degree, you can. But if you want to get a psych degree from a respected university where it's going to mean something, you have to put in the work for it. It's not just a matter of like regurgitating the opinions that you showed up with on your first day of freshman year.
00:15:53.760OK, so I want to get into that because you make a point that I want to come back to later after we talk about what's going on.
00:15:59.620But for this Lifespan Psychology course, Junior Samantha was asked to write a 650 word essay reacting to a study that she was assigned to read about how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender.
00:16:14.960I did a little digging and I found the study that she was meant to be responding to.
00:16:18.080It's called Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations and Mental Health During Early Adolescence.
00:16:24.200The abstract describes the study as examining whether being high in gender typicality is associated with popularity,
00:16:30.160whether being low in gender typicality is associated with rejection and teasing,
00:16:34.720and whether teasing due to low gender typicality mediates the association with negative mental health.
00:16:41.020They looked at middle school children, 34 boys and 50 girls,
00:16:44.240described hypothetical popular and rejected or teased peers,
00:16:48.080and completed self-report measures about their own gender typicality experiences
00:16:52.040with gender-based teasing, depressive symptoms, anxiety, self-esteem, and body image.
00:16:56.820So it's a pretty, like, meaty study, and her task was to read the study
00:17:02.360and respond in what the instructor asked for to be a thoughtful reaction.
00:17:08.500These kind of things, I think, were typical in seminars that I was a teaching assistant for,
00:17:14.220where you'd have one or more readings each week
00:17:17.680and the students were asked to write a little thing
00:17:39.060when we look at the rubric for how this essay was graded,
00:17:42.680But the way that in the in the assignment probably says three different times, three different ways.
00:17:49.120Do not just summarize. Do not just summarize the fact that I mean, I've been there.
00:17:53.200But the fact that this instructor had to essentially beg the students not to just summarize and demonstrate some sort of thoughtful analysis really says a lot to me.
00:18:03.360Yeah. And it's you know, it's it can be hard, I think, for some students making the transition from high school to college to put something of their self into analysis.
00:18:13.240I think a lot of students can do quite well in high school, just, you know, painting by numbers, doing what they're supposed to do. And I think some students, when they get to college, struggle with the concept that like, you're supposed to add some of your own insight, analysis, perspective here, but do it in a way that is consistent with how we as a field of psychologists critiques
00:18:43.240and use studies as evidence to inform conclusions.
00:19:59.420When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:20:05.300I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:20:11.660I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:20:15.360I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:20:23.460Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:20:27.680I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:20:32.460I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:20:40.060They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:20:43.960But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:20:47.400They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:20:51.040Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:20:58.820If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:21:05.700This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:21:17.820I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:21:25.000I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:29:02.480Maybe she thinks that's good that those boys are being, like, teased and feel bad about themselves as a way to enforce gender typicality on them.
00:29:15.240Maybe she hasn't thought about it that deeply.
00:29:16.860um but she really just doesn't engage with the study much at all you know yeah i don't know
00:29:23.280those are my initial reactions what do you think i feel the same before when i first read her essay
00:29:29.500before reading the study that she was assigned to respond to i was like okay well she's sort of
00:29:35.400name checking what she what she read a few times that was before i realized what she was assigned
00:29:42.800to read and respond to was like an actual study i'm i am no longer convinced that she read the
00:29:48.000full study i think that perhaps she read the abstract um but yeah i'm no i'm no longer i've
00:29:53.180since reading the actual study that she was given to respond to i've really changed my thinking
00:29:58.160around this and you know she she references the study like name checks it twice but doesn't talk
00:30:06.060about any specifics truly it would be like if i was given an assignment to write about the movie
00:30:13.160wicked and i turned in an article about how i don't like going to the movie theater i don't
00:30:17.500like leaving my house i don't like taking the train yeah the prices like it's not really when
00:30:23.560you when you when you read the study it's not really ever it does not really engage with the
00:30:27.500study in any kind of meaningful way the point here is that the study itself is not weighing in
00:30:32.200on the morality of being highly gender typical or not it is attempting to measure the uh the
00:30:44.660phenomenon among kids and measuring a mechanism by which it might be enforced through you know
00:30:53.500social norms and other interpersonal dynamics and then the mental health consequences of that
00:31:00.120These are the things that psychology looks at. It measures constructs and proposes mechanistic theories of how this construct affects this outcome.
00:31:12.040The stuff that she's talking about, you know, how kids should be and saying that, like, it's better, like better how?
00:31:21.080Certainly not better for mental health.
00:31:24.200You know, if you can't, she doesn't even try to put her argument in the terms of something that could be psychologically measured.
00:31:36.240She just says that it's better from this morality position, which is a different thing.
00:31:44.020I think that she saw the title, read the abstract, perhaps skimmed it and assumed this is a study that is all about the opinion that, you know, we should not be that bullying is bad and that everybody should be, quote, whatever they want all the time or whatever.
00:32:02.440Like, I think that she just like it's clear to me that she's making a lot of assumptions about what is actually in the study, because I don't think she actually engaged with it in a real way.
00:32:11.240Yeah, she could have written her whole essay based on the title alone.
00:32:14.820Like, you don't need to read the abstract, let alone the study itself.
00:32:18.460And ultimately, that's what this thing was.
00:32:20.980It's not like the Nobel Committee really wanted to know this particular young woman's thoughts on the subject.
00:32:29.140This was an assignment for her to demonstrate to her teacher that she has learned some of the material that has been covered in the class, learned about how she as a psych major is expected to talk about studies, talk about constructs, talk about behavior.
00:32:49.540And, you know, she really failed to do any of that.
00:32:53.600Well, she failed to do any of that, and she got a failing grade because this paper got a zero out of possible 25 points.
00:33:02.340I just did the assignment and turned it in, and I talked about the Bible in it.
00:33:06.940That is, I view all my opinions in the world through the Bible.
00:33:12.600I gave my opinion, and not just my opinion, but that's like, the Bible says that God created male and female,
00:33:19.840And anything that's not from God or glorifying to God is glorifying to the enemy.
00:33:25.820I have to say, I am disappointed with how I've seen this story being framed.
00:33:31.000I've seen these headlines, like even she describes it as being failed for citing the Bible.
00:33:36.860That's not really correct because her paper doesn't specifically cite anything at all, really, biblical or otherwise.
00:33:42.020It's just her opinion and then kind of referencing the Bible and God's will more generally.
00:33:48.360of like the idea that she was failed for citing the bible she don't cite anything like that's just
00:33:53.280not true i've seen that kind of parroted over and over again not correct yeah you can't just
00:33:58.420say the word god and be like i've cited the bible no you haven't so the big question is did this
00:34:06.260paper deserve that grade zero out of 25 points now i will own that i have what might be a bit
00:34:13.680of an unpopular opinion about this, but in my opinion, it's a little bit difficult to say
00:34:18.940whether or not this paper deserved a zero. Obviously, this essay is not good, right? No one
00:34:26.560is, I, it was not a good essay, not a passing essay. Turning in an essay that suggests that
00:34:32.140it's okay to bully trans kids is just like not a good essay, full stop. But I've had to grade
00:34:39.380plenty of essays that espouse worldviews that I find abhorrent, right? Like you teach at a Catholic1.00
00:34:44.240university, you're going to get some anti-choice essays that use the Bible to support their
00:34:48.240reasoning. I have graded dozens of papers like that. So the real question to me is not, is this
00:34:52.980a good paper or a bad paper? It's obviously a bad paper. That's not the question. The real question
00:34:57.260is, is this a failing paper along the criteria outlined in the rubric? Because as people who
00:35:05.320have been in the classroom and graded student papers, the most important thing in grading is
00:35:09.820the rubric. You have got to have an ironclad rubric that students get ahead of time so that
00:35:15.220if a student complains or there is confusion about why they got a grade, you just go back to the
00:35:19.340rubric and explain why, but also sort of defend yourself. Was that your experience in teaching
00:35:24.960writing assignments as well? Yeah, totally. And even more generally than that, I think it's good
00:35:31.060when expectations are very clear like it's yes it is a cover your ass document so you can defend
00:35:38.520yourself against students who have complaints but also it is like a fair good faith document to make
00:35:46.220sure we're all on the same page we all have the same expectations yeah and yeah you you got you
00:35:52.840have to have a good rubric good description of what students are being asked to do so i have the
00:36:01.940grading rubric here um it gives a little bit of an outline of what of like the mechanics it has to
00:36:07.120be 650 words if it's less than that it will not get credit if it's past a deadline it will not
00:36:12.100get credit it says please remember that your reaction paper should not be a summary but rather
00:36:16.080a thoughtful discussion of some aspect of the article it lays out a couple of potential approaches
00:36:21.480to the reaction, you know, things like a discussion of why you feel the topic is important and worthy
00:36:26.780of study or not, an application of the study or results to your own experiences, an application
00:36:32.200of the study or results to observations about others' behaviors, linking the objectives or
00:36:36.860findings from the assigned article to other domains of development or other findings that
00:36:40.460we have read or discussed in class. But then it also says there are other possibilities as well.
00:36:44.660The best reaction papers illustrate that students have read the assigned materials and engaged in
00:36:48.720critical thinking about some aspect of the article. Now, here's the important bit of that,
00:36:53.380the actual grading rubric scale. The scale is as followed. One, does the paper show a clear tie-in
00:37:01.160to the assigned article? 10 points. Two, does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to
00:37:07.600the article rather than a summary? 10 points. Three, is the paper clearly written? 5 points.
00:37:14.720I will say, after taking a look at this rubric, I was surprised that it was not the most specific.
00:37:22.140Now, it is entirely possible that there are other grading expectations that have been made clear in this class.
00:37:26.620For instance, perhaps the syllabus says that all written work needs to include citations.
00:37:31.800Or maybe the instructor said that verbally in class.
00:37:34.420There can be no confusion about it unless you weren't listening.
00:37:36.520But just going from this rubric as written, I have to say I was a little bit surprised to see that this grading rubric was not the most specific for a college course.
00:37:58.760And so they probably do not have extensive experience teaching.
00:38:02.740And I would make a bet that after this experience of getting dragged through the national news, they will approach their grading rubrics with fresh eyes in the future and perhaps firm them up a little bit.
00:38:14.700But I agree with you. It's a little bit vague about what exactly is needed.
00:38:19.640And in fact, it does seem pretty permissible, like stepping back from exactly what it calls for.
00:38:28.080My overall takeaway from this is like, write a 650 word thing that shows that you read the article and demonstrate some critical thought about it.
00:38:37.860I think that's really what's being asked for here.
00:38:40.400But, you know, they list these eight separate possible approaches that might be taken.
00:38:45.400They say that other possibilities could exist as well.
00:38:48.040So it does give the sense that it is fairly open about how a student might complete this assignment.
00:38:56.380One thing that I do wonder about is, you know, at what point in the semester was this assignment done?
00:39:04.920Because it gives the sense of an assignment that is like every week students are going to be reading a paper and writing one of these little 650 word responses.
00:39:14.160And so if this happened late in the semester, it's kind of a different thing than if it happened early in the semester.
00:39:19.160If this is the first paper that somebody turned in, you know, I might grade it one way and then have a conversation with that student about like, you know, I gave you a decent grade here, but in the future, I'm going to be looking for X, Y, Z just to get us aligned on what the expectations are.
00:39:35.740But if it happened late in the semester, it makes me wonder, has this been a pattern all semester long where this student just turns in garbage after garbage and refuses to listen to feedback?
00:39:51.040I don't know if that's what's happening or not, but it does feel like it would be important context within that particular classroom before this whole thing blew up and became national news.
00:40:02.500So Samantha does say that she turned she had she's already had several assignments of this nature in this class and that she's done them all the same way and that she's never received a bad grade and that this was her first bad grade.
00:40:15.780I cannot vouch for that, but that's what she said in an interview.
00:40:18.760And it does sort of, to me, seem to set up a very convenient pattern because the instructor who gave her this grade is trans.
00:40:28.260And I think that what Samantha is trying to suggest is that, oh, my instructor didn't have a problem when I turned in all these essays the exact same way.
00:40:37.640But when I turn in one where I say that, you know, being trans is demonic, all of a sudden the instructor has a problem and gives me a zero.0.75
00:40:46.320That's sort of what I think is being set up here.0.97
00:40:50.300Again, I cannot speak to the truth of whether or not it is true that she has turned that the student has turned in several papers the exact same way.
00:41:02.040Huh. It is kind of hard to believe that, like, she's just been turning in psychology papers that are supposed to be critiquing and responding to studies.
00:41:13.180And if she's just been turning them all in, offering her moral opinions about how people should lead their lives without addressing the substance of any of the studies, and she's been getting good grades for them the whole time, I find that a little difficult to believe.
00:45:18.200They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:45:22.660But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:45:26.120They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:45:29.720Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:38.180If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:45:44.120This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:45:56.580I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:46:03.560I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed.
00:46:06.820from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:46:11.720nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters
00:46:18.920and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture
00:46:24.080conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right
00:46:29.240place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
00:48:02.100We've been talking about this just because we're educators from a perspective of like,
00:48:06.780if a student had meaningfully turned this essay in in good faith,
00:48:10.200spoiler alert, I do not believe that's what's going on here.
00:48:12.900But just for the sake of argument, let's talk about it in that as if that's what's going on.
00:48:16.840Yeah, yeah. So what grade would you have given if this was just a run-of-the-mill, good faith student turned this in?
00:48:25.760I could go as high as 8 out of 25. I could see 10. And I still have lots of friends who are in academia who are, you know, lecturers and adjuncts and instructors. I asked around. Generally, it fell somewhere between like 3 and 10. 10 was the highest grade anybody was willing to go, which is still a failing grade.
00:48:46.820i i could probably go as high as eight on this however in my class a zero is for somebody who
00:48:56.300didn't turn something in plagiarized or had some other kind of like big problem if you a zero is
00:49:03.080for no effort made this is a failing paper to be sure but in my class i don't think i would have
00:49:08.520given in a zero honestly this probably would have been a a a see me situation again it sort of does
00:49:14.980go back to your point of like when when in the semester that this happened you know i could see
00:49:20.660being like if this is how you feel you need to go back and actually meaningfully engage with the
00:49:27.440source text to support what you're saying yeah or like rewrite this and turn it in and i'll grade
00:49:33.160that or something yes and i will say a lot of people online have been saying how this is just
00:49:39.120not a well-written assignment how could somebody who was a junior at a university turn this turn
00:49:44.880work like this in, I am sad to say it is not wildly out of step with the kinds of assignments
00:49:50.760that instructors are used to seeing. The Chronicle of Higher Education spoke to Oliver Treldy,
00:49:55.920an assistant professor at the Institute of American Constitutional Thought and Leadership
00:49:59.340at the University of Toledo, who said that while lots of people were completely shocked at the
00:50:05.300quality of the writing here, if you grade a lot of papers, it is not at a shocking level.
00:50:10.680It is kind of at that level that although it's lower than what you want and certainly lower than average, it's the sort of paper that you're used to seeing, which is kind of sad but true.
00:50:21.460And I think one of the issues that is getting sort of lost in the sauce of the obvious culture war issue being stoked here is that reality, that kind of writing that students are turning in.
00:50:32.340This is not shockingly bad. This is probably like baseline. And like, shouldn't we be talking about that?
00:50:39.880Shouldn't that be a concern, a cause for concern?
00:50:43.600Seriously, you did a nice job reading it, kind of smoothing over some of the grammatical errors.
00:50:54.640So because the instructor of this class is trans, what is obviously being set up here is that the instructor was just personally offended by what Samantha wrote.0.60
00:51:04.960And that's what her bad grade was all about.
00:51:07.440However, in the feedback that the instructor left for Samantha, they don't say this at all.
00:51:11.560So the instructor of this class, Mel Kurth, who was a decorated instructor who had just won the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from OU's Department of Psychology, who also happens to be trans, gave Samantha the grade.
00:51:23.540They left what I would consider to be pretty thoughtful feedback.
00:51:27.360In this feedback to Fulneke, the instructor insisted that they were not penalizing the student for her personal beliefs, but wrote, quote,
00:51:34.620There is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections.
00:51:38.660I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses.
00:51:44.120But using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice.
00:51:54.840They also implored the student to apply some more perspective and empathy in her work and told her that, quote,
00:52:01.520calling an entire group of people demonic is highly offensive, especially a minoritized
00:52:06.800population. I will say shout out to this instructor because the feed they gave, like1.00
00:52:13.380I'm only even reading just a segment of it, but the feedback that they gave, again, I think
00:52:18.360really engaged with what was written in good faith. Nowhere in the feedback was it like,
00:52:25.460you obviously hate trans people like me and that's why you're failing. I think it, you know,
00:52:30.100saying, if this is how you feel, you need to come with some, you know, some hypothesis or
00:52:36.820empirical findings to support or challenge what you what you don't agree with in this piece and
00:52:42.660like laying out a pathway to do that, as you said. And so the idea that I don't think that an
00:52:49.120instructor who was just super sensitive and offended by what was written would give such
00:52:54.180thoughtful, substantive feedback on an essay like this, if that's truly what was going on.
00:52:58.660Yeah, it does seem like the instructor really tried to provide guidance about why the student received a failing grade here, what they could have done differently to get a better grade.
00:53:12.340And, yeah, it seems like the student really needs to hear that in a big way.
00:53:19.820And so it sounds like when a student gets a failing grade and has a complaint about that, another instructor gives a second set of eyes to make sure that grade was warranted.
00:53:28.140So another instructor for this course, Megan Waldron, who is not trans, said that they took a look at it and concurred with the initial F grade, saying that Samantha's essay, quote, should not be considered as a completion of the assignment.
00:53:41.800Similarly, gave feedback to Samantha that said, hey, be more thoughtful and cite some sort of empirical evidence.
00:53:48.600It's not just your opinions on God to buttress the arguments that you're making in your piece.
00:53:53.340So two different instructors now have given, I would say, like very good, thoughtful feedback on what went wrong and how to make sure that it doesn't happen again for this kind of assignment.
00:55:43.500There you go. Yeah. Good. Good on you for not giving him a zero because you disagreed with what he was saying, as this student is alleging was done here.
00:55:53.820I mean, when you're when you're when you are an instructor, you get all kinds of students semester after semester.
00:55:59.500You see all kinds of assignments. The idea that this would have been the first time that a trans instructor has maybe seen an essay from a student that was, to put it mildly, not the most empathetic toward the trans community.
00:56:14.860I highly, highly doubt that this was the first time that instructor received an essay like this.
00:56:22.180and so i think this idea that oh this instructor was just super sensitive and couldn't handle it
00:56:27.340and got offended that's so out of step with how minoritized people live their lives people always
00:56:32.620think like oh this is the first time that they've encountered this kind of attitude and it's like no0.95
00:56:36.760actually it's a dime a dozen and like we're encountering shit like this all the time and0.95
00:56:40.420have to just roll with it if we want to have careers actually this is you're not special0.94
00:56:43.980you're not unique like truly come on yeah you think this is the first time that they encountered
00:56:50.020some anti-trans sentiment? No. So needless to say, Samantha was not happy to get a zero on her
00:56:57.160assignment. Now, according to the academic grade policy at University of Oklahoma, an appeal can
00:57:02.020only be considered after the student has made an unsuccessful attempt to resolve differences with
00:57:06.340the instructor. According to reporting from the Oklahoman, Samantha disputed this grade with the
00:57:10.700graduate instructor and was still denied credit for the assignment. So she filed a formal claim
00:57:15.880of a legal discrimination based on religious beliefs.
00:57:43.200He is the person who demanded that all schools teach the Bible and that all teachers who are not from Oklahoma pass a screening test to ward off, quote, woke indoctrination.
00:57:54.280She emailed all of these people within hours of this instructor declining to give a different grade.
00:58:00.040Her paper was then published in full on the social media account of the University of Oklahoma chapter of Turning Points USA, the organization started by the late Charlie Kirk, saying that she cited the Bible as her only source, but really did not seem to grapple much with the content of the original source material.
00:58:18.760This I actually found very funny because I was looking at the social media posts about this from Turning Points USA and they were really posting that paper like a gotcha.
00:58:27.820Like they thought Samantha ate with that paper. Does this paper deserve an F?
00:58:32.740And what's funny is that in like writing teacher pedagogy circles, it's like, oh, yeah, it actually the essay actually sparked a conversation about how bad student writing has gotten.
00:58:42.260it really like that is perhaps the most shocking thing of this entire story to me that that she
00:58:49.020was willing to publish that paper online and thought that it would make her look good in some
00:58:54.040way it's so bad like it makes her look like she writes like a middle schooler because that is the
00:59:00.160level at which she writes so in a response on social media the university of oklahoma said
00:59:05.100that it is launching an investigation they also said that full necky would not suffer any academic
00:59:10.340harm from the grade. I don't know exactly what that means, but I think what they're saying is
00:59:15.320like, I don't know if they're saying this grade on this one assignment is going to be thrown out
00:59:20.060or if she's not at risk of failing the class or it's not going to impact her GPA. I'm not totally
00:59:25.660sure what that means. But to me, it kind of seems like even though this investigation has not been
00:59:30.720completed, it kind of sounds to me like she sort of already won. They already decided that she's
00:59:36.380not going to have to actually you know endure this grade that she got yeah that is what it
00:59:42.760sounds like i mean i'm sure the university just wants to move on from this and like perhaps she's
00:59:49.080won this battle of not receiving a failing mark on this paper that's going to drag down her grade
00:59:55.500but i do feel like she's losing the larger war by having that thing posted on the internet for all of
01:00:01.060time as riddled as it is with grammatical errors, logical fallacies, vapidness.
01:00:09.680Yes. So I have to say the instructor, Mel, is being put on leave during the investigation
01:00:16.140and is essentially not coming back to finish out the semester. I have not seen a lot of people
01:00:21.000reporting on just how disruptive this could potentially be to somebody who was also in
01:00:25.580graduate school. A lot of times, as you and I both did, the way that grad students pay for school
01:00:30.780is through teaching. And if an instructor is not teaching, they might not be able to pay for their
01:00:35.000classes. So it could potentially derail their coursework. So being put on leave as a graduate
01:00:40.020student as an instructor is no small thing. It could really have a negative impact on this
01:00:47.180person's schooling and this education that they are entitled to. I do really feel bad for the
01:00:52.620instructor here because grad school is also very stressful. You know, you're trying to teach at
01:00:57.720Probably, this might not even be the only course that this instructor is teaching this semester, and also trying to do their own coursework, and also trying to do research towards their dissertation.
01:01:09.820It's just a stressful, difficult time.
01:01:15.080Also, you're broke through the entire thing.
01:01:17.820So having this kind of big national, I don't know, news story where you've got Turning Point USA rallying the anti-trans mob online to come down on this instructor and their whole department, I really feel for the instructor.
01:01:39.880Me too. And I guess that's my big point is that I don't know. I don't believe this, but let's say for the sake of argument that this instructor, the paper deserved a higher grade than it got. This instructor got it wrong, should have gotten a higher grade.
01:01:55.380Is that the kind of thing that deserves a national outcry? Is that situation made better for anybody other than the student to have that be something that is completely blown up where national figures are weighing in and it becomes a flashpoint? I would argue no.
01:02:14.540And I think that's what extremists and culture warriors, like people associated with Turning Points USA, want. So Turning Points USA, which we know was formed by the late Charlie Kirk, has been all over this. They put out a very hateful statement, misgendering the instructor, Mel Kurth, of course, calling for them to be fired.
01:02:35.440Because this instructor is trans, the way it's being talked about in these in these conservative media circles, it's probably pretty unshocking.
01:02:42.800This trans educator is trampling a student's freedom of speech for being Christian.0.99
01:02:50.200Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, described the situation as deeply concerning and is calling on the University of Oklahoma regions to review the investigation to ensure that other students are not unfairly penalized for their beliefs.
01:03:02.080Mind you, I don't think this person was penalized for their beliefs.0.99
01:03:05.700I think they were being penalized for their shit writing.1.00
01:03:07.500Yeah, their shit writing, their inability to engage with the substance of the study as evidence.1.00
01:03:16.260I get so annoyed that they're talking about this as a freedom of speech issue.0.99
01:03:20.940Like, freedom of speech has nothing to do with this.
01:03:23.240It's not like she's being locked up for her beliefs or something.
01:03:27.260she's just not getting points on a written assignment
01:03:32.460that she thinks she ought to have gotten
01:03:55.700The freedom of speech has nothing to do with this. This is a pedagogical thing.
01:04:02.060When I was in college, I once got super drunk the day before an assignment and didn't show up and got a zero because I didn't show up.
01:04:09.780That was freedom of speech. Actually, you know, I I should if if we were if we should if we were allowed to just say, actually, it's freedom of speech that I should get a 100, even though I didn't show up and do the assignment.
01:04:20.480I wish I could go back in time and and and use that dynamic because boy, would I have used the shit out of that?0.67
01:05:34.180Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
01:05:38.280I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
01:05:43.060I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
01:05:50.680They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
01:05:54.580But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
01:05:58.020They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
01:06:01.660Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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01:06:35.640I'm going to have to look up this story.
01:09:21.780How many of these conservative figures have spent so long decrying things like DEI, people getting things that they haven't deserved, you know, suck it up, buttercup, work hard, da-da-da-da, nobody cares about your feelings.
01:09:39.680Yeah, tale as old as time, you know, what about her feelings?
01:09:43.280So Dusty Devers, Oklahoma state senator, released a statement saying that he believed Bulneki was given a low grade because the instructor was offended.
01:09:50.620And again, he said that the issue raises serious First Amendment concerns, saying that it's looking a lot like unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by a state actor.
01:10:05.780But I guess that's my point, is that it's totally fine for her to not be happy with the grade that she got.
01:10:12.480I wouldn't be happy if I don't. Nobody likes getting bad grades, but making this an issue where the governor and your state senator are weighing in, I don't think helps anybody.
01:10:22.760And this is just my opinion based on my own sense of how stuff like this usually goes in media.
01:10:27.900But I think this whole thing is essentially a false flag.0.99
01:10:32.600Do you know the phrase rat fucking?1.00
01:10:35.060Unfortunately, as an American living in the 21st century, I am intimately familiar with rat fucking.1.00
01:10:40.800So for folks who don't know, rat fucking is kind of behind the scenes, covert, political sabotage or a political dirty trick.0.99
01:10:49.800I described that more or less correctly, right?0.99
01:10:52.220Yeah, that sounds generally consistent with my understanding of it.1.00
01:10:55.740You got all these disingenuous actors playing political games, fucking rats behind the scenes.0.98
01:11:01.540So I think that she wrote this essay on purpose with the intention of contacting Turning Points USA, Fox News, to sort of become the latest right wing grievance celebrity.0.98
01:11:16.240Folnecki's mother, Christy Folnecki, is a lawyer who defended a number of January 6th rioters and once sued the public school system to force the school to go back to doing in-person schooling during COVID.
01:11:28.760I am unwilling to believe that that is not part of this.
01:11:32.180As Parker Malloy of the Present Age Newsletter points out,
01:11:35.680Bolnecki's mom is retweeting posts that say things like,
01:11:39.020quote, if you claim to be a transgender, you should be banned from working at any school.1.00
01:11:44.460Transgenderism is a mental illness.0.99
01:11:46.240And, quote, individuals who identify as trans should be automatically disqualified1.00
01:11:50.920from holding any position as teacher or professor.
01:11:53.520To that last one, the post that was explicitly calling for employment discrimination0.99
01:11:57.420against all trans people, Christy, Samantha's mom, replied and said, agreed, proud of my daughter.
01:12:04.280So as Parker Malloy points out, like that really is the tell. This is not about this one class or0.99
01:12:10.760this one paper or even about this one trans instructor, quote, because the family is not
01:12:16.100arguing that this particular grading decision was wrong. They're in fact celebrating their
01:12:21.060daughter's role in a broader campaign to make trans people unemployable. The discrimination
01:12:26.400complaint, the media tour, the outrage, it is all in service of the goal stated very plainly
01:12:31.800in the posts that Christy Polnecci is boosting. Trans people should not be allowed to work in1.00
01:12:37.480education. So I completely agree with Perker Molloy here. It is not really about this one paper1.00
01:12:42.920because the larger point is about pushing trans people out of education and creating a climate
01:12:49.680of fear where trans folks just feel like, oh, I better just keep my head down because I don't
01:12:53.460want to be the next, you know, right-wing villain because I did my job in a classroom.
01:12:58.480Absolutely. They've been doing it for years now, and they've got like a well-oiled machine of
01:13:04.720targeting individual hapless trans people who happen to get caught up in their crosshairs.
01:13:11.860As Malloy puts it, this is an industry now. There are jobs, salaries, speaker bureaus,
01:13:16.820and career tracks. The right is always looking for new faces to put on this movement. Young,
01:13:21.700photogenic people who can be positioned as victims of trans overreach. The detransitioner who regrets1.00
01:13:27.440her surgery. The swimmer who tied with a trans woman. The Christian student whose essay got a
01:13:31.860bad grade. Samantha Fulnecki fits the profile. She's a college student. She's Christian. She0.87
01:13:36.620wrote about her faith and got a bad grade from a trans instructor. It doesn't matter that the
01:13:40.580essay was genuinely bad, that two instructors agreed on the assessment, that the feedback was
01:13:45.100professional and patient, or that the grading rubric supports the decision. The narrative
01:13:48.960writes itself, trans professor bails Christian student for quoting the Bible. What Fulmecki's
01:13:53.940mother is saying out loud that trans people should not be allowed to teach at all is what this
01:13:58.040movement actually wants. The individual controversies are just vehicles to get there.
01:14:02.540Each one is designed to make an example of a trans person to signal to every other trans person in
01:14:07.080education or health care or any public facing role, this could happen to you. Keep your head
01:14:12.100down. Better yet, leave. And when we look at what's actually happening with this case,
01:14:17.300What Parker Malloy describes there is already happening. The investigation has not even concluded as of our recording this, but already the Oklahoma House of Representatives District 98 has honored Samantha Fulmecki with a citation of recognition.
01:14:31.500She's also doing a speaking engagement with Turning Points USA and was already on Fox News.
01:14:36.600So exactly what Parker Malloy describes as becoming an industry that essentially mints telegenic, young, aggrieved right wingers.
01:14:47.760We are already seeing that machinery turn in front of our eyes.
01:14:51.560Yeah, it's big business. It gets a lot of clicks. It gets a lot of TV views.
01:14:55.820I wouldn't even begin to know all the ways that they're making money off of this, but they definitely are.
01:15:02.640And we can't not mention that all of this is happening in Oklahoma, which has been, I guess, something of a test ground for anti-trans and transphobic policies in education.
01:15:11.940We've talked about this before, but Chaya Raychik, who runs the Libs of TikTok account, was given a role in the Oklahoma Department of Education's Library Media Advisory Committee, even though she does not live in Oklahoma, has never lived in Oklahoma, has no connection to the state, has no background or credentials in education.
01:15:27.960She's actually a realtor. She's just someone who runs social media accounts and hates trans people.0.86
01:15:34.960And that's enough to be given a position within Oklahoma's public education.1.00
01:15:39.740Yeah, Oklahoma. They've really, if you remember a couple of years ago, there were a bunch of right wingers like running for and winning school boards. And I think a lot of that took place in Oklahoma, too.
01:15:54.300So it's not just the university level, but even like K-12 education has really had this very strong influence from these political Christian types who really, much like Samantha's essay, value vague moralizing that is in some way possibly connected to the Bible over evidence or truth.
01:16:24.300facts. It's a whole approach to education that they have really been pushing in that state,
01:16:33.200unfortunately, for the children who live there. Yeah, it's not going well because they're
01:16:36.640consistently ranked pretty low in public education. So I don't think it's necessarily
01:16:41.200working for the people who are looking to be educated in the state. Working great for
01:16:47.340libs of TikTok. Yeah, really working good for them. And this is also where the governor,
01:16:52.640Kevin Stitt, has signed a slew of anti-trans bills, things like banning gender-affirming care,
01:16:58.840bills to keep trans kids out of sports, you know, bills barring trans kids from using bathrooms
01:17:04.480consistent to their gender identity, things like that, right? So I don't think this is a coincidence0.74
01:17:08.120that it's happening in Oklahoma at all. And so the latest on this case is that the University
01:17:14.440of Oklahoma Graduate Student Senate passed a resolution calling on the university to provide
01:17:19.100more transparency regarding the administrative leave and additional protection for graduate
01:17:23.720teaching assistants in course investigations. During a meeting, the Graduate Student Senate
01:17:28.200said, if these accusations were upheld, external employers and academic institutions could
01:17:33.000reasonably conclude that OU grants grades and degrees without requiring students to
01:17:37.420demonstrate genuine learning through coursework, exams, and honest evaluation. The resolution read,
01:17:42.600upholding these claims would call into question the value and credibility of an OU degree,
01:17:47.120suggesting that academic outcomes can be influenced by unfounded accusations rather than merit.
01:17:52.900In making this appeal to the university administration, the Graduate Student Senate
01:17:56.920stands in solidarity with the graduate student instructor and will continue to advocate for
01:18:00.820their rights, their safety, and their well-being. The Ways and Means Committee Chair Sam Jensen,
01:18:05.040who authored this bill, said that he is aware that this graduate student has received death
01:18:08.860threats and harassment because of this situation. They say that we are asking the university to
01:18:13.680condemn that behavior and to step up their protections for the entire university community.
01:18:18.220The resolution is also calling on the university to disclose the procedures during the investigation
01:18:22.420and explain in detail why the instructor was placed on leave and to formally apologize for
01:18:27.700the instructor for the bullying that they received. And that really, I think, is a good point that
01:18:32.680how quickly, this is somebody who had previously just won an award for how good of a teacher they
01:18:39.180were, how easily and how quickly the university just throws them away at the first blush of any
01:18:45.980kind of grievance that, you know, might make them a right wing villain. And to me, it underscores
01:18:53.000the importance of things like a graduate student union or a TA union, you know, so that you aren't
01:18:57.780just abandoned with no one to advocate for your protections. Yeah, nowhere in the summary of
01:19:03.760actions by the university doesn't seem like they had the instructor's back, right? They just like,
01:19:10.600first thing, put the instructor on leave, let the student know that they won't be penalized,
01:19:17.240effectively undercutting the grade that the instructor had given the student.
01:19:23.060And something that was mentioned in that resolution from their student senate, which
01:19:27.300I think is a really important point is that there's no emphasis on learning here like the whole point of classes and university education is to learn is for students to learn stuff from their instructors not to boldly proclaim their religious opinions and get rewarded for it.
01:19:53.180I feel like that really gets lost a lot when talking about these kinds of cases.
01:20:10.420Culture warriors like Bulneke and the Oklahoma conservative politicians supporting her are merely taking advantage of a decades-long trend in higher education.
01:20:19.120students think they are customers who deserve to be catered to,
01:20:22.660rather than curious humans who might have something to learn.
01:20:25.860With the Trump administration going to war with universities,
01:20:28.660and Oklahoma's Freedom Caucus, a group of right-wing state legislators
01:20:32.060decrying OU's dissent into radical activism,
01:20:35.340and demanding a public apology to Samantha Folnecki while threatening a funding cut,
01:20:39.940you can see how hard it is for even the most stalwart college presidents
01:20:43.640to stand up for the principles of academic freedom.
01:20:46.540Inside Higher Ed does an annual student voice survey that polls thousands of current college students from across the country.
01:20:52.100And this year's result showed that 65 percent of college students consider themselves customers of their institution in some capacity,
01:21:00.620defined in the survey as expecting to have their needs met and be empathized with because they are paying tuitions and fees.
01:21:07.760So that is exactly what you're talking about, right?
01:21:10.740Like that this idea that, you know, college is just a customer service experience where you pay tuition and you get a grade that you want and not a place where there's an expectation that you would do any actual learning and growing.
01:21:27.020And I think ultimately, like that is the goal of people like Turning Points USA.
01:21:31.320They want to break trust in education to make every classroom essentially a battlefield and every teacher potentially a villain.
01:21:39.360The real tragedy here is that it does not just hurt faculty, which it absolutely does, you know, especially faculty that doesn't have tenure. If you're an adjunct or a TA, you might have a lot less protections. So it hurts those faculty, but it also hurts students.
01:21:53.960Like, if we stop expecting students to be able to engage with evidence, to build arguments,
01:21:58.620to revise and challenge their thinking, what exactly is it that they're supposed to be
01:22:21.640Yeah, thanks for having me here, Bridget.
01:22:22.980It was fun to talk about teaching, and I hope that instructor is okay, and I hope Samantha, at some point in the future, looks back on this whole experience with deep shame and regret.