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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   22166 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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It's yesterday's news at this point, but the recent University of Oklahoma essay controversy has continued to fester in my brain for the sheer incongruence of reactions. In case you haven't heard, Samantha Fulnecky, a junior studying Psychology, received a 0 for submitting an essay whose central argument was essentially a blunt appeal to Biblical inerrancy. While I find this a suspect choice in even most religious studies courses, the assignment tasked her with reviewing a journal article about the effects of social pressures on adolescent gender presentation and identification - hardly something the Bible addresses directly. In response, the graduate student instructor, who is trans, gave her a zero. Fulnecky, in her (apparent) indignance, complained to the local chapter of TPUSA that this is an act of religious discrimination, and sparks flew. And they've kept flying. Fulnecky received an honorary award from the Oklahoma state Congress and has been speaking about her situation on Fox News. The university has sided with Fulnecky, placing the instructor on indefinite administrative leave until...the situation blows over? It's unclear how much "investigation" this really requires, but it is clear that Fulnecky has won the battle.

I am more interested in the war. Conservative scuffles at universities seem dime-a-dozen at this point, which makes it all the more surprising that this one has climbed out of the Twitter pit to receive national attention. For one, the essay is not particularly high-quality. This is not a case where a student submitted a carefully argued theological analysis, but instead appealed to the most straightforward of scriptural arguments and didn't even cite the verses in question! 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. I've heard some grumblings that the instructor gave this grade specifically because she is trans - so it hurt more, or something - but I think most cis psychology profs these days would have a similar reaction. I think Fulnecky deserved some points, but not many. She lacks one of the most foundational skills a college-level writer needs: adapting your ideas to your audience.

Speculation on Twitter is running wild, suggesting that Fulnecky intentionally submitted a poor essay to gain some conservative street-cred, that her lawyer mother is involved, and plenty of other mental gymnastics. I don't blame the gymnasts - this case has been elevated to levels that are suspiciously unjustified, in my view. The banal reason is that it's easy pickings for conservative commentators who are salivating for any story they can nut-pick to put on the evening news block. But is that really all it takes? Can a religious person do any wrong in the eyes of the New Right? I realize writing this that I sound completely incredulous that the media could blow up a story, but seeing it happen in real-time has been pretty mind boggling. Read the essay and let me know what you think. I don't want to be mistaken for consensus-building here, and I would welcome any and all steelmans for the pro-Fulnecky position. Maybe I've been cut by yet another scissor statement (in this case, essay).

This is further evidence to me that red-tribers have completely abandoned most institutes of higher education. It's no longer a question of "we must reform the universities and stop them from being ideologically possessed!" but "the universities are ideologically possessed and the only way out is avoidance/destruction." It doesn't help when college graduates seem to be fleeing the red tribe like it's got the plague - it's much easier to prop up a controversy when the remaining red tribers lack the personal experience to vet it properly. All this to say: I think universities are really going to have it rough under this administration. They've already been sued to hell and back. If the red tribe couldn't turn the university system around by playing nice, they're going to do it by force - social, legal, or otherwise.

That essay reminded of one of my favorite pieces of writing advice, "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" by Paul Roberts:

It's Friday afternoon, and you have almost survived another week of classes. You are just looking forward dreamily to the weekend when the English instructor says: “For Monday you will turn in a five-hundred-­word composition on college football.”

Well, that puts a good hole in the weekend. You don't have any strong views on college football one way or the other. You get rather excited during the season and go to all the home games and find it rather more fun than not. On the other hand, the class has been reading Robert Hutchins in the anthology and perhaps Shaw's “Eighty-­Yard Run,” and from the class discussion you have got the idea that the instructor thinks college football is for the birds. You are no fool. You can figure out what side to take.

After dinner you get out the portable typewriter that you got for high school graduation. You might as well get it over with and enjoy Saturday and Sunday. Five hundred words is about two double­-spaced pages with normal margins. You put in a sheet of paper, think up a title, and you're off:

WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE ABOLISHED

College football should be abolished because it's bad for the school and also for the players. The players are so busy practicing that they don't have any time for their studies.

This, you feel, is a mighty good start. The only trouble is that it's only thirty­-two words. You still have four hundred and sixty­-eight to go, and you've pretty well exhausted the subject. It comes to you that you do your best thinking in the morning, so you put away the typewriter and go to the movies. But the next morning you have to do your washing and some math problems, and in the afternoon you go to the game. The English instructor turns up too, and you wonder if you've taken the right side after all. Saturday night you have a date, and Sunday morning you have to go to church. (You can't let English assignments interfere with your religion.) What with one thing and another, it's ten o'clock Sunday night before you get out the typewriter again. You make a pot of coffee and start to fill out your views on college football. Put a little meat on the bones.

WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE ABOLISHED

In my opinion, it seems to me that college football should be abolished. The reason why I think this to be true is because I feel that football is bad for the colleges in nearly every respect. As Robert Hutchins says in his article in our anthology in which he discusses college football, it would be better if the colleges had race horses and had races with one another, because then the horses would not have to attend classes. I firmly agree with Mr. Hutchins on this point, and I am sure that many other students would agree too.

One reason why it seems to me that college football is bad is that it has become too commercial. In the olden times when people played football just for the fun of it, maybe college football was all right, but they do not play college football just for the fun of it now as they used to in the old days. Nowadays college football is what you might call a big business. Maybe this is not true at all schools, and I don't think it is especially true here at State, but certainly this is the case at most colleges and universities in America nowadays, as Mr. Hutchins points out in his very interesting article. Actually the coaches and alumni go around to the high schools and offer the high school stars large salaries to come to their colleges and play football for them. There was one case where a high school star was offered a convertible if he would play football for a certain college.

Another reason for abolishing college football is that it is bad for the players. They do not have time to get a college education, because they are so busy playing football. A football player has to practice every afternoon from three to six and then he is so tired that he can't concentrate on his studies. He just feels like dropping off to sleep after dinner, and then the next day he goes to his classes without having studied and maybe he fails the test.

(Good ripe stuff so far, but you're still a hundred and fifty­-one words from home. One more push.)

Also I think college football is bad for the colleges and the universities because not very many students get to participate in it. Out of a college of ten thousand students only seventy­-five or a hundred play football, if that many. Football is what you might call a spectator sport. That means that most people go to watch it but do not play it themselves.

(Four hundred and fifteen. Well, you still have the conclusion, and when you retype it, you can make the margins a little wider.)

These are the reasons why I agree with Mr. Hutchins that college football should be abolished in American colleges and universities.

On Monday you turn it in, moderately hopeful, and on Friday it comes back marked “weak in content” and sporting a big “D.”

This essay is exaggerated a little, not much. The English instructor will recognize it as reasonably typical of what an assignment on college football will bring in. He knows that nearly half of the class will contrive in five hundred words to say that college football is too commercial and bad for the players. Most of the other half will inform him that college football builds character and prepares one for life and brings prestige to the school.

As he reads paper after paper all saying the same thing in almost the same words, all bloodless, five hundred words dripping out of nothing, he wonders how he allowed himself to get trapped into teaching English when he might have had a happy and interesting life as an electrician or a confidence man.

But note that, even in 1958, Roberts felt such an essay was deserving of a D, not an F.

Oh boy how the times have changed. In this case the teacher gives a lazy an uninspired assignment, and is pissed to get equally lazy and uninspired essays back. This mostly wouldn't fly in current year.

I always had writers block so I never did well in school, but the best thing I learned was how to piss out 500 words of tired but passable slop in an hour.

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