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The university was well aware of the implied political pressure on them to be maximally accommodating to conservative Christians. They might not want to, but they're run by the state government of the reddest state in the country, and they know it. Oklahoma is the US capital of social conservatism in actual legislation, and OU isn't exactly a tier one research school(although it's a football powerhouse) so the consequences for 'not rolling over' are being forced to anyways. This isn't the university of Texas where legitimate academic programs are strongly valued by major private industries over competitors or a UC school where the state government wants them to do this- they have no protection.
This just makes the university appear less competent than they already did. IF the university was aware of the political pressure they would've presumably passed that down to their TAs and/or kept their TAs on a shorter leash which they clearly did not.
Whether OU is a tier 1 research institution or a tier 9 is not relevant to the matter at hand.
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What's this "research" you speak of? Is it some niche sport colleges play in between the football and basketball seasons?
Some truth is said in jest—for better or worse, I'm actually not convinced research output matters as much as sportsball-prestige when it comes to a university's political bargaining power.
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