The University of Oklahoma Fails by Excusing Failure

Grades on college essays have been a source of controversy since professors started giving grades on college essays.  The latest case to be elevated to international attention concerns University of Oklahoma junior Samantha Fulnecky, who received a 0/25 grade on a response essay in a Developmental Psychology course.  

There’s a lot of misinformation out there, coming from Fulnecky’s supporters who believe her contention that she was being treated unfairly because of her Christian beliefs, and from those who believe that the suspension of graduate teaching assistant Mel Curth for giving Fulnecky a failing grade on that essay was an act of craven capitulation to a religio-political ideology by university president Joseph Harroz, Jr.  Oh, and the failing grade on that essay will have no effect on Fulnecky’s final grade in the course.  Jolly.

So… the assignment was to write a 650-word response to an article titled “Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence.” (Curmie was able to access the article because of his university affiliation; it’s likely behind a paywall for you, Gentle Reader).  Here’s the first sentence of the abstract, which is probably all you need to know: “The current study examines whether being high in gender typicality is associated with popularity, whether being low in gender typicality is associated with rejection/teasing, and whether teasing due to low gender typicality mediates the association with negative mental health.”  Needless to say, the article believes these “associations” to be accurate: “Overall, children in early adolescence thought of popular peers as very gender typical, indicated by both the descriptions of hypothetical popular peers and the ratings of the participants themselves.”

This is where Curmie thinks back to his grad school days, when he was proposing to write a dissertation on contemporary Irish adaptations of Greek tragedy.  He asked a very well-known theatre historian (but not a specialist in either Irish or Ancient Greek theatre) to chair his committee.  The response: “I know nothing about Irish theatre, but I know good academic writing when I see it.  So yes, I’ll do it.”  Curmie knows considerably less about psychology than his dissertation chair did about Irish theatre, but in general terms he, too, knows good academic writing when he sees it.  The article by Jennifer A. Jewell and Christia Spears Brown qualifies; Ms. Fulnecky’s response, to be charitable, does not, especially since the authors of the article recognize the limits of their work and encourage further study, whereas Ms. Fulnecky is certain that her own shallow prejudices are all that matter.

What Ms. Fulnecky wrote, even if you agree with her perspective, was, frankly, dreadful.  It is little more than a spewing forth of personal opinion with little reference to the article, which does not have anything to do with multiple genders.  Her screed is self-contradictory and sloppily written.  There are frequent assertions along the lines of “God says…” but no specific references even to the Bible (a rather weak source for an essay for a psychology course, but at least it’s a source). 

This is where Curmie abandons his usual practice of trying to link to everything he references.  There’s simply too much out there, and it would take many hours to re-trace his steps to find who exactly said what on what social media platform or in what publication.  This is a blog piece, not an academic essay; you’re just going to have to trust that Curmie did indeed read this stuff somewhere. 

OK, here we go, with various assertions put forward by supporters of either Fulnecky or Curth.

Both sides think the fact that Curth is a trans woman is relevant.  Every right-wing pseudo-Christian source (and, alas, a good many others) has a headline about “Trans Professor [insert verb here]…”  (Sigh.)  Fulnecky’s supporters think that Curth is “mentally ill” and gave the paper a lower grade than it deserved simply because the paper was indeed offensive to her presumably evil (“demonic”?  really?) impulses.  Fulnecky claims she didn’t even know “he” was trans (it’s on online course).  Could she be telling the truth about that part?  Curmie doubts it, but it’s possible. 

Curth’s supporters believe she was set up: that Fulnecky was actually trying to get Curth to fail the essay so she could be a martyr for the cause.  If that was indeed the strategy, it worked.  She’s the most talked-about undergraduate in the country who isn’t on an athletic scholarship, and she’s winning awards from local Christo-fascist pols who, if nothing else, know how to play to their base.  It is not certain that she’s nothing more than an attention-seeking brat, but it’s pretty damned likely.  And, of course, TPUSA was all over the case in no time flat, suggesting that they have somehow managed to have even less integrity than when Charlie Kirk was still alive. 

Fulnecky also claims she didn’t write the essay to be controversial.  That is (only) remotely possible, but she certainly didn’t hesitate to capitalize on the controversy.  She’s definitely the kind of person to get offended if you wish her Happy Holidays.  Oh, and by the way, the grade on this paper counts less than 2.4% of the overall grade for the class.  Tempest, meet teapot. 

Curth details the reasons for the grade, writing that “I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point [sic] for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.”  There’s more, Gentle Reader, but that’s the crux.  Curmie also notes that the above link to Curth’s comments takes you to the TPUSA X page.  Credit to 1Liza’s response: “why would you show this part? you fail propaganda class.”  Fulnecky’s subsequent argument that of course someone engaging in religious discrimination would say that is probably true.  But it’s also what someone who wants students to actually do the freaking assignment would say. 

It is also true, as a couple of conservatives have said, that the essay prompt does not specifically require citing empirical evidence, and suggests an “application of the study or results to your own experiences” as a possible strategy for completing the assignment.  It’s a bit of a stretch to say that’s what Fulnecky did, but at least it’s a third cousin twice removed from what was actually expected.  Curmie would have thought that the need to provide supporting evidence for one’s assertions would go without saying in a university level psychology course, but perhaps not…

Things Curmie has read:

--Fulnecky’s paper was too short and should have been failed on that basis alone.  Or, it was too long and should have been penalized for that.  Both wrong.  The 650 word count was a minimum, which Fulnecky achieved; there was no maximum length.  There is certainly a case for saying that Curth takes herself a little too seriously: a 10-point deduction (out of 25!) for coming up 1 word short of an arbitrary word count limit?  Seriously?  Curmie sometimes dropped a score by a letter grade or so if a paper was significantly short of the assigned length, but making the best possible score a 60% for being a word or two short?  Give me a break.

-- Curth looks like, well, a trans woman.  Fulnecky is conventionally attractive in a vapid sorority girl kind of way.  That means, supposedly, that Curth gave her a bad grade out of jealousy.  It’s unclear whether Curth even knew what Fulnecky looked like (see above, “didn’t know he was trans”), even apart from the general inanity of the argument.  You can be assured, Gentle Reader, that there are plenty of photos of Fulnecky in various outfits and comely poses all over the right-wing press.

--Lots of headlines claim that the reason there’s a controversy is that Fulnecky “cited the Bible.”  She didn’t.  There’s neither a specific reference to a single chapter and verse nor a direct quotation even without a citation.  What Fulnecky did was to reference the Bible, giving us not the text but her interpretation of it.  As noted above, even saying “Book X of the Bible says Y in Z chapter and verse” would make the essay a little less execrable.  Were Curmie of a cynical disposition, he might suggest that she hasn’t read the Bible with any more care than she read the assigned article. 

--Arguments from one side that if the grader were a cishet white male, there’d be no complaint… arguments from the other side that if it were a Muslim who wrote a similar essay about that student’s faith, the grade would have been better.  Chances that either of these assertions is true: possible, but extremely unlikely.

--Curmie has seen an article that claims Fulnecky had done well on previous essays in which she’d made her religious beliefs clear… and article in which she is quoted as saying she got 5/10 on a similar assignment.  Somebody is making shit up, whether it’s her or someone with an agenda one way or the other.

OK, so how bad was that paper?  Again, Curmie isn’t a psychologist, but here’s what he’d say.  “Clear tie-in to the assigned article”: barely at all, but a little; 3/10.  “Thoughtful reaction… rather than a summary”: I guess that depends on what you mean by “thoughtful.”   In context, Curmie would expect logical reasoning based on observable evidence.  5/10.  “Clearly written”: a lot of people are saying that the writing per se is dreadful.  It is.  But Curmie has read literally thousands of undergrad papers over the years.  This is bad, but not even in the bottom quintile.  3/5.  That means 11/25: still failing, but not a zero.  So, was that grade “punitive”?  Yeah, well, maybe sorta.  Curmie’s longtime FB cover photo of Mercutio’s invocation of “a plague o’ both your houses” seems apt.

Of course, there are other concerns: the fact that the university president is yet another gutless idiot who thinks that due process doesn’t matter if there’s political capital to be made by boot-licking, for example.  The Freedom from Religion Foundation letter is worth reading in its entirety, but this excerpt sums it up pretty well: “This response from the university sends a chilling message: that academic standards may be suspended when a student invokes personal religious belief, and that instructors may face punishment for applying those standards even-handedly when it results in a bad grade for a religious person.”  Their objection is to the suspension per se.  The editorial on Inside Higher Ed centers instead on the obvious violation of due process involved. 

The most significant response, though, comes from Conner Tranquill, the Chairman of the Oklahoma Federation of College Republicans.  You can see his statement above.  Suggesting that even privileged white Christians need do good work and fulfill assignments if they want good grades, of course, does not sit well in Trumpistan.  That tweet has now been taken down.  Imagine Curmie’s surprise. 

Trying to Be Fair to Jeff Sessions

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

“Colleges Are Creating ‘a Generation of Sanctimonious, Sensitive, Supercilious Snowflakes,’ Sessions Says.” Such is the headline for a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education [if the article is behind a paywall, you can access it via Curmie’s Facebook page] about remarks by Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a high school summit sponsored by the conservative group Turning Point USA, one of whose core “aims” is to “Effectively push back against intolerance and bias against conservatives in higher education.” Same old, same old, right?

Let’s face it, Jeff Sessions is one of the dimmer bulbs in the considerably less than brilliant firmament that is the Trump cabinet. No, he’s not the worst of the lot, but Curmie isn’t entirely certain that putting Godzilla in charge of HUD wouldn’t be one of the better appointments of this administration (he'd certainly be better than Ben Carson). And Mr. Sessions knows about as much about higher education as Curmie does about quantum mechanics: he knows that such a thing exists.

That said, it’s time to be fair. Sure, his speech was laden with what the Chronicle’s Chris Quintana calls “well-worn stereotypes,” and yes, there was the obligatory fluffing of Sessions’s boss, but whereas such sycophancy might be a little more de rigeur now than in previous administrations, all this stuff is pretty much boilerplate. Moreover, it’s curious that few on the right seem terribly concerned with the free speech rights of people who disagree with them. OK, fine.

But, unless he deviated significantly from his prepared script, his speech wasn’t all that bad. No, he didn’t handle the “lock her up” chant very well: he looked embarrassed and tried to say something non-committal rather than telling the assembled adolescents to shut up and move on, i.e., precisely what Trump’s supporters tell his political adversaries all the time. (To his credit, Sessions did note after the fact that he should have brought up presumption of innocence.  Not as good as saying it on the spot, but partial credit.)  Nor did he choose to moderate a perfectly good rant by recognizing that (for example) even wealthy colleges can’t afford to pay for security for the likes of professional assholes like Milo Yiannopoulos every time the College Republicans will chip in for his speaker’s fee. And he sort of conflates a judge’s decision not to throw out a lawsuit with ruling in favor of the plaintiff.

But he certainly didn’t complain about being “a persecuted conservative student in Alabama,” as Quintana would have us believe. Not even Jeff Sessions is stupid enough to claim that conservatives were an oppressed minority in 1960s Alabama. He said that he was one of a small group Republicans who opposed the likes of Democrats like George Wallace. (Sessions implies without saying outright that it was Wallace’s segregationist stance that led to Sessions’s opposition, thus avoiding an outrageous lie and merely misleading the audience in, shall we say, a Clintonesque manner.) This would have been in the nascent years of the Southern strategy, during which time racist white Democrats became racist white Republicans (e.g., Strom Thurmond) without missing a beat, but thereby reformulating the national (especially Electoral College) political calculus.

More to the point, he didn’t actually say that “colleges” (in general, per the headline) or “Many of the nation’s colleges” (per the article) are “creating and coddling ‘a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes.’” He said that “some schools are doing everything they can to create” such… erm… crystalline ephemeralities. "Some," not "most," and certainly not "all."  Like it or not, he’s right. Just look at the litany of examples he provides:

At Brown University, a speech to promote transgender rights was cancelled after students protested because a Jewish group cosponsored the lecture. Virginia Tech disinvited a conservative African American speaker because he had written on race issues and they worried about protests disrupting the event…. 

Through “trigger warnings” about “microaggressions,” cry closets, “safe spaces,” optional exams, therapy goats, and grade inflation, too many schools are coddling our young people and actively preventing them from scrutinizing the validity of their beliefs. That is the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do. 

After the 2016 election, for example, they held a “cry-in” at Cornell, they had therapy dogs on campus at the University of Kansas, and Play-dough and coloring books at the University of Michigan. Students at Tufts were encouraged to “draw about their feelings.”

These episodes, however isolated, are the stuff of headlines, and however well-intentioned their proponents may be, they're embarrassing: to the university, to progressive thought, and to education writ large.

In one of the last entries of my previous blogging persona, Curmie (then known as Mulcher4) extolled the “Virtues of Doubt”; that essay happened to have been about the murder of abortionist Dr. George Tiller, but the point was more universal. In that essay over nine years ago, I wrote, “Absolute self-confidence terrifies me, and not simply because my own neuroses are so manifest.” This is still true, even more so when that confidence/arrogance/hubris manifests in a post-adolescent.

Equally importantly, the very essence of education is to throw a lot of ideas into the ring and see which ones seem to fit the evidence. Recognizing the difference between fact and opinion matters. Free speech matters. This isn’t about simple politeness, which is generally a good thing, or about respecting others’ opinions, which is also generally a good thing. Nor is it about sitting in a circle and singing Kumbaya. It’s about fighting for the truth, not for a personal dictum that may or may not be grounded in rational thought. Above all, it’s a recognition that people who see the world differently aren’t inherently evil, and that what we see on that cave wall over there just might be a shadow instead of the full image.

Curmie identifies politically as a contrarian: whatever the political landscape in his area, he’s likely to be in opposition. After 17 years in East Texas, Curmie may be regarded as a lefty (and not merely because that’s the hand he writes with, although that’s also true: cue the Simon and Garfunkel, “communist ‘cause I’m left-handed, that’s the hand they use, well, never mind”), but plonk him down in Massachusetts and he might just move a little right-ward. More to the point, to quote myself from almost seven years ago, “alas, I must tell you that in my experience there have been more assaults on academic freedom and 1st amendment rights on campus from the left than the right.” This statement is, alas, more true now than it was then.

In case you hadn’t noticed, there are a lot more people on Curmie’s right than on his left, but if Curmie ever gets into trouble for having a big mouth or an over-active keyboard, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it’s for not being sufficiently “progressive” or “inclusive” or otherwise orthodox in his liberalism… you know, for crimes like suggesting that men are allowed to have ethical objections to abortion, or that people who voted for somebody I didn’t aren’t (necessarily) evil, or that casting a white girl as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame falls a little short of burning a cross while wearing a white hood and robe.

A couple of other points to make in passing:

• Curmie is a fan of both FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, mentioned with approbation in Sessions’s speech) and the ACLU for much the same reason: they care about the rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. FIRE is thought to be conservative, the ACLU to be liberal. But that’s only because their clients tend—by no means exclusively—to break that way. Not every case either organization takes up is necessarily worthy of the time and effort, but Curmie is grateful that both organizations exist.

• It was interesting to note that Mr. Sessions doesn’t really address university curricula or faculty as part of his critique, concentrating instead on administrators, particularly in the student services area. Could this be the beginnings of a recognition on the part of the right that university faculty (and their colleagues in public education in primary and secondary schools) aren’t responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong in this country, from the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby to the popularity of Nickelback? Nah, I didn’t think so. 

•  Fox News whines predictably that the gathering of a few hundred high school kids from around the country to listen to a gaggle of partisan speakers doesn’t get enough press coverage. “Charlie Kirk, the 24-year-old founder of TPUSA, now in its sixth year, told Fox News that a similar event for young liberals ‘would be streamed everywhere... and it would be glorified as a wonderful organization,’ calling the media bias ‘blatant’ and ‘corrosive.’” Curmie would like an example—just one, please—of an event for liberal kids, or even, God forbid, for outstanding high school kids regardless of their politics or lack thereof (!) which has received even comparable coverage. Curmie is a patient man; he’ll wait. 

• It does strike Curmie as a bit odd that a speech about free speech opportunities for all, and about the importance of engaging with “difficult or challenging ideas” should be delivered at an explicitly partisan gathering by an A.G. who is addressing them not really in his official capacity, and who was only one of a series of utterly like-minded speakers who fed them the same one-dimensional pabulum every day, all week. The message of the right is therefore just as hypocritical as that of the left: our side should have the right to express our opinions… and to stifle yours.

La la how the life goes on.