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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18047 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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It's unclear how much "investigation" this really requires, but it is clear that Fulnecky has won the battle.

The obvious place to start would be the following question: "Let's see the other essays submitted and the grades they received." I would imagine someone asking that question is why the school has so abruptly sided with Fulnecky, because I would bet a hundred bucks to the charity of my opposite's choice that there were objectively worse essays given better grades in that grading pile. Do you think I'm overly confident in that assessment, particularly given the school's response? If you don't, then what's the basis of our disagreement?

While the resulting grade of 0 seems slightly punitive and I don't doubt it was motivated by some level of personal offense, the professor's response hardly could be considered discriminatory.

You think that the grade seems punitive. I agree. I think the essay deserves a bad grade, and it seems to me you agree. The question is why it got this specific grade. How many zeroes has this instructor handed out over the last year or two or five? What patterns might emerge from how the instructor typically concludes that a zero is assigned? If, as many other people are noting, most instructors never give a zero for a turned-in essay exhibiting even the most minimal amount of effort, and this instructor is typically no different, then the obvious question is what was different here. And shucks howdy, wouldn't you know it, we appear to have a likely candidate right off the bat...

Religion is a protected category under civil rights law. I'm given to understand that discrimination in grading based on protected characteristics would be a straightforward violation of the student's first amendment rights, and is the sort of thing that institutions with deep pockets have been routinely taken to the cleaners for over the last several decades. Nor is this issue some mystery wrapped in an enigma; show the rest of the grading pile, and maybe the last few grading piles too, and one of two patterns should clearly emerge.

Again, the argument is not that this student wrote a good essay. The argument, which appears to have won more or less immediately, is that the instructor was nakedly discriminatory on the basis of religion against one of their students. No one is confused about whether or not this is an instantly career-ending offense in the general case, but until recently there has, by all evidence available, been a tacit understanding within Academia that Christians don't really have actual civil rights.

It's possible that Fulnecky is actually an ignoramus and the essay in question represents the best intellectual output she's capable of producing. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that the University should award her her erstwhile instructor's degree, because she just schooled them. I do not think that considering the later possibility represents "mental gymnastics", and again, this is a question we could easily answer by examining her other essays. I'd bet most of them read like median college student essays.

The possibility you ought to consider a bit more is that this is may in fact be an example of student activism, of exactly the sort Academia has openly claimed a mission to encourage and inculcate for many, many decades. In that case, the only novel bit here would be who it's aimed at.

Religion is a protected category under civil rights law. I'm given to understand that discrimination in grading based on protected characteristics would be a straightforward violation of the student's first amendment rights, and is the sort of thing that institutions with deep pockets have been routinely taken to the cleaners for over the last several decades. Nor is this issue some mystery wrapped in an enigma; show the rest of the grading pile, and maybe the last few grading piles too, and one of two patterns should clearly emerge.

If your religion says that you can drive at any speed on any road, and you write that down in your driving test, you will fail your driving test. That is the only way to run a society without a state church.

Now, from what I have seen, the question for the essay was about gender roles and not about the existence of non-binaries, which is what she spent most of her argument on. A failing grade is such well deserved.

Is it plausible that she got a zero for picking her beliefs most likely to offend her prof instead of going on some other mostly unrelated tangent instead? Sure, and yes, that would be unfair.

I am also not sure how discrimination law works, exactly. Surely not everything downstream from a religious belief must be ignored. If I go to a job interview stark naked and predictably do not get hired, can I turn around and successfully sue them if nakedness is required by my religion?

My gut feeling as a godless European is that there is a difference between being directly discriminated against based on your religion and being indirectly discriminated against because of behaviors required by your religion which break popular social norms or laws.

So a prof who decided that no Christian students would pass their class would be discriminating based on religion, while one who simply decided to give zero points to any essays which argued for gender essentialism without citing scientific sources would not.

You are basically whitewashing the TAs actions here. If the article was instead about how prayer helped coping with some aspects of adolescence, and an athiest student wrote a response essay which said this was ridiculous because there was no God, with the same rubric, and they were given a zero for it, this would be just as clearly religious discrimination.

The obvious place to start would be the following question: "Let's see the other essays submitted and the grades they received." I would imagine someone asking that question is why the school has so abruptly sided with Fulnecky, because I would bet a hundred bucks to the charity of my opposite's choice that there were objectively worse essays given better grades in that grading pile. Do you think I'm overly confident in that assessment, particularly given the school's response? If you don't, then what's the basis of our disagreement?

I mean, the University of Oklahoma almost certainly is highly worried about the state government taking away big chunks of its independence for political reasons, and telling a trans TA(so not even a professor) to shut up and sit down is a small price to pay.

If this is in fact an example of unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of religion, then I would not describe the removal of their independence as "for political reasons".

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