Here’s an early Christmas present for Americans who think Christians should be able to freely speak of their faith on college campuses: a transgender instructor at Oklahoma University has been fired after giving a student a zero for a Bible-based essay on “gender stereotypes.”
OU student Samantha Fulnecky, a 20-year-old junior on a pre-med track, wrote the essay as part of an assignment for a psychology class taught by Mel Curth, a male teaching assistant who uses “she/they” pronouns. Here’s how Samantha described the assignment:
“I was asked to read an article and give my opinion on the article, and the article was about gender binary and mental health and gender stereotypes, specifically in children, because it’s a lifespan development class,” Fulnecky told Fox News Digital. “So I was asked to give my opinion and my reaction to the paper.”
The scholarly article on which she was to offer her opinion was titled, “Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence,” and students could earn up to 25 points on the essay. Curth broke down the grading like this:
“Does the paper show a clear tie-in to the assigned article?” is the first, worth up to 10 out of the assignment’s 25 total points.
“Does the paper present a thoughtful reaction or response to the article, rather than a summary?” is the second, also worth up to 10 points.
“Is the paper clearly written?” is the last criterion, worth up to five points.
Samantha said, “So I did this assignment the same as I would any other in that class, gave my opinion on gender binary and gender stereotypes and that, naturally my views are from the Bible and my Christian kind of worldview. And so that’s what I wrote about and I didn’t think anything of it.”
In her essay, she wrote something that should not be considered controversial, namely, “Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind.”
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For her efforts, Mel Curth not only gave Samantha a zero, but also what she described as “an earful,” leaving comments on her paper that her work was “offensive,” that she needed “more empathy” in her writing and had allowed her “personal ideology” to guide her conclusions rather than “empirical evidence.”
“You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn’t change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed,” Curth said.
Samantha fought back, first challenging Curth on the zero grade, then escalating things to school administration when Curth refused to budge on the grading. He was put on leave at that time, pending an investigation.
On Monday, Oklahoma University did the right thing and permanently removed Mel Curth from his teaching duties. The university said in a statement, “Based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant’s own statements related to this matter, it was determined that the graduate teaching assistant was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper. The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the university.”
The University of Oklahoma confirms that Mel Curth, the teaching assistant who gave a student a failing grade on a psychology essay, will no longer be teaching. pic.twitter.com/DAF8vFYFLk
— Pop Base (@PopBase) December 23, 2025
Oklahoma state Rep. Gabe Woolley (R-98th Dist.) praised the Curth’s removal, saying, “This was the right decision. As I said from the beginning, this individual should never have been employed at a public university — particularly in a human sciences role — when he rejects the fundamental biological reality that there are two genders.”
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