The transgender graduate teaching assistant who gave a failing grade to a student’s anti-trans essay has been officially dismissed from teaching by the University of Oklahoma (OU).

Earlier this month, OU placed trans TA Mel Curth on administrative leave after she gave a student a grade of zero on an essay about a study on gender roles in which the student called trans people “demonic.” The student, Samantha Fulnecky, filed a religious discrimination complaint with OU in November.

Related

University dismisses 2nd professor in kerfuffle over anti-trans student’s essay

A statement from the university said the investigation into the religious discrimination claim has concluded, but the findings will not be released.

“Based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant’s prior grading standards and patterns, as well as 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 statement said. “The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the University.”

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

The school also stated it “believes strongly in both its faculty’s rights to teach with academic freedom and integrity and its students’ right to receive an education that is free from a lecturer’s impermissible evaluative standards.”

“We are committed to teaching students how to think, not what to think,” the statement said. It also reasserted a prior announcement that the student’s grade appeal was decided in her favor, meaning the assignment was removed from her total point value in the class.

A statement from the University of Oklahoma: pic.twitter.com/FzcjByOjpp

— University of Oklahoma (@UofOklahoma) December 22, 2025

The OU chapter of the American Association of University Professors slammed the school’s decision.

“Essentially, nothing is new here,” the group said in a statement. “OU claims without providing any supporting or specific reasons why Mel Curth was removed. They have claimed in the past in press releases that this was due to supposed and disturbing claims of ‘religious discrimination’ that clash with academic freedom. Is it now?  Instead, they hide behind vague statements and essentially assertions of ‘trust us.’ At this point, they need to show us and not tell us. And once again, OU is making an employment decision public, which is inflaming the situation.”

The assignment asked students to write a “thoughtful” and “clearly written” 650-word reaction paper to a study about gender typicality (the degree to which a person’s perceived behaviors and interests align with societal stereotypes for their gender), peer relations, and mental health.

The instructions said the paper should demonstrate a clear “tie-in” to the study and discuss either the topic’s importance, its application to one’s own experiences, possible alternate interpretations of the study’s data, or its relation to other studies and findings in developmental psychology.

In her paper, Fulnecky wrote that people aren’t “pressured to be more masculine or feminine,” that she doesn’t see it as a problem when peers use teasing to enforce gender norms, and that “eliminating gender in our society… pulls us farther from God’s original plan.” She also said trans identities are “demonic and severely [harm] American youth.”

“God made male and female and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose. God is very intentional with what He makes, and I believe trying to change that would only do more harm,” Fulnecky wrote. “Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men.”

“My prayer for the world and specifically for American society and youth is that they would not believe the lies being spread from Satan that make them believe they are better off as another gender than what God made them,” Fulnecky concluded, stating that she wished to raise her own children in the belief that “our lives and bodies belong to the Lord for His glory.”

In her response, Curth — to whom the OU Department of Psychology recently gave its Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award — wrote that her grade wasn’t because Fulnecky had “certain beliefs,” but rather because the paper “does not answer the questions for this assigment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.”

Curth notes that Fulnecky’s response contradictorily claims that people aren’t pressured into gender expectations even as the student reflects “a religious pressure to act in gender-stereotypical ways.”

WATCH: protest underway at the University of Oklahoma rallying in support of the instructor who was put on leave after giving a student a zero on a psychology paper. @OKCFOX pic.twitter.com/AOoVtwmbXb

— Grant Palmer FOX 25 (@grantpalmertv) December 5, 2025

“Additionally, to call an entire group of people ‘demonic’ is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population,” Curth wrote. Curth noted 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.

The course’s instructor, Megan Waldron, added that she concurred with Curth’s grade on the assignment, writing, “This paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment.” Waldron says the course asks students to support their ideas with “empirical evidence and higher-level reasoning.”

Waldron wrote that she found it concerning that Fulnecky didn’t consider “bullying (‘teasing’)” a bad thing, and told Fulnecky, “Your paper directly and harshly criticizes your peers and their opinions, which are just as valid as yours.”

On December 5, hundreds of students rallied in support of Curth, chanting, “OU shame on you,” “Protect our professors,” and “Justice for Mel.” Even students who didn’t agree with Curth’s failing grade for the student agreed that Fulnecky’s essay was poorly written and that Curth didn’t need to be put on leave.

The incident has highlighted a growing trend of conservative Christian students publicly escalating their disagreements with professors on LGBTQ+ issues, drawing right-wing support amid the president’s campaign to end LGBTQ+-inclusive viewpoints in schools nationwide.

In response to the controversy – which unleashed a wrath of transphobic statements from Oklahoma Republicans – Fulnecky’s mom expressed agreement with an anti-trans tweet that called for a ban on any trans people being teachers at all.

Critics have noted that the current presidential administration’s crusade to end all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts in schools nationwide has encouraged conservative students to challenge and publicly call out any educators who include LGBTQ+ issues in their classroom instruction. These challenges seek to punish and silence any LGBTQ+-allied educators and to uphold conservative viewpoints as valid, even when they’re not based on scientific or academic evidence.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.