The University of Oklahoma (OU) put Mel Curth, a transgender teaching assistant (TA), on administrative leave after she gave a student a grade of zero on an essay about gender roles in which the student called trans people “demonic.” The student, Samantha Fulnecky, filed a religious discrimination complaint with OU in November. Right-wing influencers and elected state Republicans are now calling for Curth to be fired, with the student’s mom saying all trans people should be barred from teaching altogether.

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 U.S. president’s campaign to end LGBTQ+-inclusive viewpoints in schools nationwide.

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The assignment’s instructions 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.

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Student said trans identity is a demonic lie that hurts kids

In her paper, Fulnecky wrote that she doesn’t see it as a problem when peers use teasing to enforce gender norms and that “eliminating gender in our society would be detrimental, as it pulls us farther from God’s original plan for humans,” adding, “It is perfectly normal for kids to follow gender ‘stereotypes’ because that is how God made us.”

“I do not think men and women are pressured to be more masculine or feminine,” she wrote, adding, “I do not want kids to be teased or bullied in school.”

“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.”

“I strongly disagree with the idea from the article that encouraging acceptance of diverse gender expressions could improve students’ confidence,” Fulnecky continued. “Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth…. Pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth and everyone can do whatever they want and be whoever they want is not biblical whatsoever.”

Fulnecky said that her classmates who simply agree with academic viewpoints so that “they do not step on people’s toes” are “cowardly and insincere,” and added, “It is important to use the freedom of speech we have been given in this country.”

“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.”

TA called paper “offensive.” Professor agreed it deserved to fail.

In her response, TA Mel Curth — who 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.”

“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.

“[This study] isn’t a vague narrative of ‘society pushes lies,’ but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved.”

Curth then advised Fulnecky to share their personal disagreements with the study’s findings “in a way that is appropriate and using the methodology of empirical psychology, as aligned with the learning goals in this class.” The TA also offered to discuss any of Fulnecky’s concerns or questions and to offer additional educational resources.

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.”

OU “swiftly” placed trans TA on leave during investigation

In a statement, OU wrote that it takes First Amendment rights and religious freedoms seriously and began a “full review” of the situation to “swiftly” address the matter, including a “formal grade appeals process” and a review of the student’s claim of “illegal discrimination based on religious beliefs.”

OU said that the grade appeals process “resulted in steps to ensure no academic harms to the student” from the assignment. The university also said that Curth had been placed on administrative leave during the finalization of the discrimination review, leaving “a full-time professor” to serve as the course’s instruction for the rest of the semester.

Student’s right-wing mom called for ban on all trans educators

In response to the incident, the OU Chapter of the right-wing young conservatives group Turning Point USA (TPUSA), published a transphobic tweet saying, “We should not be letting mentally ill professors around students. Clearly this professor lacks the intellectual maturity to set her own bias aside and take grading seriously. Professors like this are the very reason conservatives can’t voice their beliefs in the classroom.”

Echoing that sentiment, Canadian anti-trans activist Chris Elston wrote, “Individuals who identify as trans should be automatically disqualified from holding any position as teacher or professor.” Replying to Elston’s comment, Fulnecky’s mother Kristi Fulnecky replied,  “Agreed! Proud of my daughter!”

Transgender journalist Katelyn Burns noted that Kristi Fulnecky is a former Springfield, Missouri City councilmember who faced a recall campaign in 2017 before resigning in late 2018 and also a conservative attorney who sued several cities in 2020 seeking to overturn local mask mandates and went on to defend several rioters arrested for participating in the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

In a statement, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) wrote, “The 1st Amendment is foundational to our freedom & inseparable from a well rounded education. The situation at OU is deeply concerning. I’m calling on the OU regents to review the results of the investigation & ensure other students aren’t unfairly penalized for their beliefs.”

The 1st Amendment is foundational to our freedom & inseparable from a well rounded education. The situation at OU is deeply concerning. I’m calling on the OU regents to review the results of the investigation & ensure other students aren’t unfairly penalized for their beliefs.

— Governor Kevin Stitt (@GovStitt) November 30, 2025

In a statement misgendering Curth, Oklahoma State Sen. Lisa Standridge wrote, “The only way to stop this kind of discrimination is to fire the professor. I applaud Samantha for referencing her faith in her opinion paper and I respect Governor Kevin Stitt for his action. How many more students must endure this kind of treatment as she is more than likely not the first? A reversal of her grade is proof of blatant punishment by her professor, his continued employment in any capacity at OU is proof the university condones it.”

In a separate statement, Oklahoma state Rep. Gabe Woolley (R) (who calls himself a “former member of the LGBTQ community”) posted an image of Curth and called her “a man presenting himself as a woman.”

“I don’t know what he has gone through that led him down this path, and my heart genuinely breaks for him,” Woolley wrote. “But personal trauma and personal decisions do not grant anyone the authority to misuse their position or to demand that others affirm arguments that are completely unscientific. This person is supposed to be a psychology professor — someone trained in and entrusted with understanding human behavior. Yet he is ignoring foundational principles of human psychology and biology: that men and women are two distinct sexes created in a purposeful, binary design according to God’s order.”

“To use academic power to punish or pressure a student simply because she stood firm in her faith and cited real science in her essay is not leadership. It is inappropriate, unacceptable, and should be investigated for discrimination,” Woolley concluded.

Trans journos note right-wingers are targeting trans educators

Commenting on the incident, trans journalist Parker Molloy noted that the anti-LGBTQ+ hate account Libs of TikTok (run by Chaya Raichik) posted Turning Point USA’s TPUSA defense of the student. Libs of TikTok’s posts often result in death threats against its targets.

In her own post about the incident, Burns wrote, “Conservatives see themselves losing voters with college degrees, they see trans people as an outgrowth of a too liberal society, they have a longstanding grudge with universities existing in the first place, and they see Democrats with a squishy spine when it comes to standing up for trans people in public.”

“Roll all of these factors together and you have the perfect conditions for gutting the higher education system, using conservative students and organizations like TPUSA as narcs,” Burns continued. TPUSA encourages college conservatives to actively report “radical” teachers who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

“Democrats can’t and haven’t push back en masse against these attacks because all of them are deathly afraid of getting hit with another Trump style ‘Kamala is for they/them’ ad.”

The ad Burns referred to sought to paint Democrats as having radical views on “gender ideology” that were out of touch with voters. Subsequently, high-profile Democratic politicians have disagreed on whether to embrace or reject trans-inclusion in their platforms and messaging.

Numerous commenters noted that the incident is similar to one that recently occurred at Texas A&M University when a conservative Christian student confronted her teacher for mentioning transgender people in a children’s literature class. The student said she didn’t want to “promote something that is against our president’s laws, as well as against my religious beliefs.”

The student recorded her interactions with the professor and the university president and shared her recordings online. The student was subsequently supported by anti-LGBTQ+ Republican politicians. The pressure resulted in the dismissal of the professor and the university president. Also, it spurred the creation of a new policy barring professors from discussing LGBTQ+ people and racism in classes.

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.

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