OK Governor Jumps Into a Fight Over a Homework Assignment

Summary

Bulwark Takes Podcast Summary

Episode: OK Governor Jumps Into a Fight Over a Homework Assignment
Date: December 2, 2025
Hosts: JVL & Will Sommer

---

Overview

In this episode, Bulwark’s JVL and Will Sommer tackle a viral culture war controversy involving a University of Oklahoma undergraduate’s psychology essay. After receiving a zero on the assignment, the student, Samantha Folnicki, became a flashpoint for conservative outrage, culminating in a public statement from Oklahoma's governor. The hosts dissect the merits of the assignment, the reaction from the academic and conservative communities, and broader implications for higher education and the culture war.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Essay Controversy (02:00–03:18)

• An undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma, Samantha Folnicki, submitted a 650-word psychology reaction essay centered around gender roles, largely argued on religious grounds.
• After receiving a zero, Samantha brought her story to her local Turning Point USA chapter, rapidly escalating it in conservative circles.

Will Sommer [02:30]: “She got a zero on the essay. She gave it to her local Turning Point chapter and then they really blew it up... The latest beat in this was on Sunday, the University of Oklahoma says it suspended one of the grad students involved in the grading here. So it is. It's truly crazy it's gotten to this level.”

---

2. Was the Zero Grade Justified? (03:18–06:16)

• The essay and grading rubric are public. The paper was described by the hosts as low quality, but perhaps not deserving of a zero.
• Points could have been awarded for meeting basic requirements, even if the reflections were shallow or based solely on personal ideology.
• The TAs cited the absence of “objective evidence” and noted “hurtful” language, justifying their harsh grade.

JVL [04:20]: “It does hit at least 10 points of the rubric...I probably would have given Samantha like one point for clarity of writing and probably, I don't know, like 10 points for reaction. She's reacting to the content...I think Samantha kind of has a point here.”

Will Sommer [05:46]: “A zero... that seems sort of like plagiarism level or, you know, somehow fabricating evidence or something like that.”

---

3. The Culture War Escalation (07:39–11:04)

• The situation escalated beyond university channels, with the Oklahoma governor tweeting concern about free speech and First Amendment rights.
• The hosts question the necessity and proportionality of such high-level political intervention in a relatively minor academic dispute.
• Background information: Samantha’s family has ties to conservative activism, amplifying the story’s exposure.

JVL [09:27]: “Instead she goes to Turning Point USA and we wind up then with the governor of Oklahoma, Governor Kevin Stitt, tweeting out that the First Amendment is foundational to our freedom and inseparable from a well rounded education. The situation at OU is deeply concerning. Is it deeply concerning, Kevin? Is it really?”

---

4. Broader Implications for Academia and Politics (11:04–14:04)

• Will Sommer notes the challenges for academics in red states, especially when grading conservative students who may have activist backgrounds.
• The hosts discuss the potential for such incidents to be used as test cases by organizations like Turning Point USA.
• There’s concern over the trend of escalating minor campus spats into national culture war firestorms.

Will Sommer [10:26]: “Particularly in red states, I mean, if I were a liberal or a particularly sort of a vulnerable minority professor or grad student in a red state grading a conservative student... it’s getting to a position where you’d say... let’s get you out of my class for the semester.”

---

5. The Absurdity and Disproportion of the Response (12:52–14:49)

• Both hosts lament the lack of proportionality, suggesting the student could have addressed the issue via standard university processes instead of making it a national spectacle.
• JVL points out the contrast between this controversy and more significant national issues.

JVL [12:52]: “Is there nobody in the country who's just like prepared to deal with these things in proportionate ways?... You don't have to start a fire and then pour a ton of gasoline on it in order to, I don't know. To do what? Score points?”

JVL [14:04]: “It would be nice if the victim here was a little more sympathetic and wasn't somebody who looked like they are trying to be an agitator... I am glad that Samantha is going to get a better grade. I hope she gets the 12 or 13 out of 25 that she deserves and I hope that that makes a real difference in her life...”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• JVL [08:42]: “If you're paying full freight to OU and you're being graded by a grad student, not a professor... I'd kind of be pissed too. Am I a crazy person? Am I red pilled, Will?”
• Will Sommer [09:05]: “Often when you have these professor bias cases, there's not a lot of evidence presented. And, you know, look, yeah, people on Twitter are really roasting this, but I kind of think the average undergrad essay anywhere would probably not look that good if scrutinized.”
• JVL [14:49]: “I hope she gets the 12 or 13 out of 25 that she deserves and I hope that that makes a real difference in her life and that she is able to graduate with whatever high honors a 12 out of 25 gets you in psych assignments and go on to parlay that into the graduate school or law school of her choice.”
• Will Sommer [14:49]: “The governor's going to weigh in, say A plus. You did great.”

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:00] – Introduction to the controversy and summary of the OU essay incident.
• [03:18] – Evaluation of the essay, grading process, and rubric details.
• [07:39] – The teaching assistants’ justification for the zero grade.
• [09:27] – Escalation to Turning Point USA and involvement of the Oklahoma governor.
• [11:04] – Discussion of conservative activism, campus climate in red states, and the student’s background.
• [12:52] – Critique of the nationalization and politicization of minor academic conflicts.
• [14:04] – Closing thoughts on the pettiness and absurdity of the controversy.

---

Tone & Takeaways

The discussion is sharp, skeptical, and laced with exasperated humor. Both hosts express sympathy for the procedural unfairness but criticize the decision to escalate the issue into a national political cause. They bemoan the wider trend of disproportionate responses to campus skirmishes, particularly when driven by outside activist organizations and opportunistic politicians.

The episode serves as both a breakdown of one incident and a broader critique of the politicization of higher ed, demonstrating how even mundane academic disputes can become grist for the culture war mill.

---

End of Summary

Transcript

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

Think about the last time you had to cancel a subscription. There was probably some waiting on hold, some guessing at your password, some mind numbing small talk, and maybe after all that, you still weren't able to cancel it. Good news, it doesn't have to be this way. Thanks to Rocket Money, Rocket Money tracks, manages, and can cancel your subscriptions for you. When you connect your account, you'll see a complete picture of all of your recurring subscriptions all in one place. Rocket Money organizes your subscriptions by due date and notifies you when something is coming up. So you'll never be caught off guard when you get charged. If you see a subscription you want to cancel, Rocket Money simplifies the process. Instead of waiting on hold for an hour, you can cancel it right from the app. Rocket Money will even try to get you a refund for the money you spent on subscriptions you forgot about. Stop wasting time trying to cancel subscriptions the hard way. Make your life easier and go to rocketmoney.com cancel. That's rocketmoney.com cancel. Or download the app from the Apple app or Google Play stores.

[Person Struggling with Budgeting]

Okay, it's kind of embarrassing how bad I am at budgeting.

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

Let me see your charges.

[Person Struggling with Budgeting]

Ugh, fine.

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

You spent over $600 on takeout last month.

[Person Struggling with Budgeting]

I can't cook. You know this.

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

Yes, I have had your disgusting food, but you're literally paying for a meal subscription on top of that.

[Person Struggling with Budgeting]

Whoa, wait, wait, wait.

[jvl]

That.

[Person Struggling with Budgeting]

That can't be right.

[jvl]

Look, just.

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

Just get Rocket Money. It shows you all of your expenses in one place and even tracks your subscriptions. And if there's a subscription you don't want, which for you, there are a lot you don't need, you can just cancel right in the app with a few taps.

[Person Struggling with Budgeting]

So you mean I don't have to call anyone to cancel?

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

Nope. No hold times or anything. And they'll even try to get you a refund on some of the months of wasted money, which is a lot of money for you.

[Person Struggling with Budgeting]

Okay? Okay.

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

And if you thought I was done, I'm not. The app can also help you make a budget that works for your income. And anytime you get close to your spending limits, it alerts you so you know exactly where your money is going at all times.

[Person Struggling with Budgeting]

All right, Emin, what do I have to do?

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

Go to RocketMoney.com cancel or download the app from the Apple or Google Play stores.

[jvl]

Hey there. I'm jvl here with my bulwark colleague, Will Sommer, and right now, the biggest culture war controversy in America is about an undergraduate psych essay at the Oklahoma University. We are the stupidest timeline. Will please tell the people what is happening that has the right in America. The governor of Oklahoma super mad.

[Will Sommer]

So this is the story that has all of America captivated. As you said, it focuses on a University of Oklahoma undergraduate named Samantha Folnicki. She wrote a. An essay for her psych class that was meant to be a response to an article about gender roles. And she wrote, you know, I. Weirdly, they published the essay so we know what it says. Yeah, it's not a very good essay, I would say about, you know, sort of just Jesus said gender should be this way and that's the way it's going to be for me. She got a zero on the essay. She gave it to her local Turning Point chapter and then they really blew it up. And so the latest beat in this was on Sunday. The University of Oklahoma says it suspended one of the grad students involved in the grading here. So it is. It's truly crazy it's gotten to this level.

[jvl]

So I think we should stipulate to a couple of things here. I think that Samantha, that's her name, right? Samantha, the undergraduate. I think she has a point. So this is a bad essay. And so people understand this is not like an honors thesis. This is a 650 word reaction essay that is basically meant to prove that you read the reading. That's that this is basically a book report. Show us you read the reading. And we have both the grading rubric from the teaching assistants and her essay. So we have full transparency into this. And then we have copies of the texts between the essays and the, between the students and the grad student. And about what, why the grade was given. And I had a. So this is a terrible essay. And it could have been written by Chat GPT for all I know. Maybe it was. I don't know.

[Will Sommer]

I think ChatGPT would have done a better job.

[jvl]

Probably, maybe, maybe. But the. It does hit at least 10 points of the rubric. So looking at the criteria, first of all, the most stringent thing here is that they want 650 words and they say that they will. The full score is 25 points, but the teaching assistant will deduct 10 points if the paper is between 620 and 649 words. Really? That seems arbitrary as fuck. But then under the criteria. So 10 points for. Is there a clear tie to the article? 10 points for reaction content. Does the paper provide a reaction reflection, discussion of some aspect of the article? Rather than a summary and five points for clarity of writing. So I probably would have given Samantha like one point for clarity of writing and probably, I don't know, like 10 points for reaction. She's reacting to the content like, you know, she doesn't have anything real to say. And instead the TAs, in their attempt to justify themselves, they were like, well, there's no objective evidence brought to bear. And you said mean things which are hurtful to, to people. I, I think Samantha kind of has a point here. This is the, the, the assignment. Am I being a crazy person?

[Will Sommer]

I don't think you're being crazy. I, I like a zero. Yeah, a zero. I do think a lot of the conservative reaction here has focused on the the idea of a zero. And I think if you read it, you say was a C, maybe a D. I mean, how. Depending on how intensely you grade these sort of reaction essays. But I do think a a 0 perhaps seems, seems pretty. That seems sort of like plagiarism level or, you know, somehow fabricating evidence or something like that. But, but I agree with you, Lord.

[Sponsor Voice]

Takes is sponsored by Aura Frames. This holiday season. I have a lot more gifts on my list than good ideas. If you're looking for something with a real personal touch, I have it on good authority that Aura Frames will crush it. The producer who wrote this ad attests that the Aura frames he gave his family were a hit last year. In fact, Sarah Longwell has one in her office that she swears by. I've seen it looks nice. You can upload unlimited photos and video. Just download the Aura app and connect to Wi Fi. It's about that easy. You can preload photos before chips and keep adding them anytime from anywhere. If you want to send your parents photos of the kids, you can load them right onto your Aura frame. Trust me, my Jewish parents love photos of my kids. Each frame comes in a premium gift box with no price tag. You can even add a personalized message for your recipient before the frame arrives. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off or as best selling Carver Mat frames named number one by Wirecutter, use promo code bulwarktakes at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code bulwark Takes. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out very fast, so order yours now. To get in time for the holidays, support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

[jvl]

I don't want to both sides Here, but the, the reactions of the TAs, and here we, we have one of the TAs saying, please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am ded point for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions of the assignment, contradicts itself heavily, uses personal ideology over empirical evidence. In a scientific class. I'm sorry, a scientific class. Friends, this is not physical chemistry. This is not fluid dynamics. It's psychology. It is not a scientific class. I don't know, I look at this and I just think, I don't know what tuition is to ou, but if you're paying full freight to OU and you're being graded by a grad student, not a professor, just a grad student, and they're like tossing this at you, I'd kind of be pissed too. Am I a crazy person? Am I red pilled, Will?

[Will Sommer]

No, I don't think it does. I mean, look, as kind of a connoisseur of bad writing, I was thrilled that the local Turning Point chapter posted it because often when you have these professor bias cases, there's not a lot of evidence presented. And, you know, look, yeah, people on Twitter are really roasting this, but I kind of think the average undergrad essay anywhere would probably not look that good if scrutinized.

[Sponsor Voice]

The.

[Will Sommer]

I do think there's this aspect, you know, as we said, I think the 0 is suspicious. I think the real, the larger issue here is this idea that if you don't get a grade, you like. I mean, it seems like there are internal administrative remedies at this university. And, you know, if you feel there's been professorial bias, but in this case, that the answer is, you know, go to Turning Point and let's make it a national sense.

[jvl]

So that's where I kind of get off the bus. So again, I'm, I'm super. Like, I'm basically there for this. And if, if Samantha was going through the university process of appealing a grade and saying like, hey, I think I got a bad day here, I'd be fully invested. And maybe she did everything that she could do, although I don't get the sense that that's the case, but instead she goes to Turning Point usa and we wind up then with the governor of Oklahoma, Governor Kevin Stitt, tweeting out that the First Amendment is foundational to our freedom and inseparable from a well rounded education. The situation at OU is deeply concerning. Is it deeply concerning, Kevin? Is it really? Is it deeply concerning? Or is it Just like, hey, this is, this is not good. And the undergraduate should get a better grade for this one midterm paper that probably doesn't affect anything in her life, period.

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, I mean, I think this is just such a, you know, a classic culture war thing that, you know, this tiny, tiny incident. But I think particularly in red states, I mean, if I were a liberal or a particularly sort of a vulnerable minority professor or grad student in a red state grading a conservative student, and we, and we should say, you know, this, this student is also. Her mom was a January 6th lawyer, so she's coming from this kind of conservative activist background. I would say. I, you know, it's getting to a position where you'd say, oh, oh, hey, you did great. You know, you know, great stuff. Just kind of, let's get you out of my class for the semester.

[jvl]

Yeah. And again, I don't think that, that teachers should have to do that even, but, but again, like, they should have done better than this. Like, I just think that the, the student here is actually in the right almost indisputably. And. But the weirdness of turning it into a federal case like this strikes me that, like, perhaps their motivations weren't entirely. Weren't entirely pure. I don't know. Like, is this entrapment? Like, it's like, hey, let's try to see if we can get a test case and write something as bad as we can. I don't know. But here's the problem I have, Will. Like, this is how you get to the both sides. And so you wind up with people on one side of America's political divide saying, huh, the president is committing war crimes and the Supreme Court has made it possible for masked and unidentified agents of the state to stop and detain anybody who looks Hispanic or is heard speaking Spanish. That's one side. And then the other side, there was this TA who gave a zero to a quick reaction paper in an undergraduate psych class out in Oklahoma. So you see, that's how we got Trump.

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, I mean, these are the sort of the classic grits. It's been a little bit, you know, I mean, obviously Turning Point USA has been much discussed this year, but I mean, now there's such a sort of electoral behemoth and sort of a. An operation within the Republican Party. I feel like it's been a little bit since we've had a classic, like, Turning Point usa big deal. Professor bias case. The woke professor. The woke grad student out of control. And so I think clearly they saw their Opportunity here. And I mean look they, you know, as we said they kind of came with the receipts here. You know, everything from the, the text messages to the essay, I guess.

[jvl]

Is there nobody in the country who's just like prepared to deal with these things in proportionate ways? And like, I don't know, like I assume universities have processes for appealing grades and for places where a student feels discriminated against. They can go through and say yeah, you know this TA sucks and I'd like to change sections. I mean it just seems like before you get the governor involved and he gets deeply concerned. Fucking deeply concerned. Kevin Stitt. You know there are, there are more important things happening in the world and there are lots of easily available remedies right in front of us and you don't have to, to start a fire and then pour a ton of gasoline on it in order to, I don't know. To do what? Score points?

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, I mean look, I think if you're a red state student, if you're conservative, you know, it's a good time in Oklahoma to you know, get the governor or someone like that to intervene. You know they've kind of been at the forefront of like anti woke education. They had libs of TikTok sit on one of their advisory boards for I believe for the pre college level. And so you know they've obviously been very active on the kind of the let's crack down on higher education movement.

[jvl]

What a world we are living in. Will Summer, I, you know is. It would be nice if the, the victim here was a little more sympathetic and wasn't somebody who looked like they are trying to be an agitator. But you know, I guess we don't get to choose those things in life. I am glad that Samantha is going to get a better grade. I hope she gets the 12 or 13 out of 25 that she deserves and I hope that that makes a real difference in her life and that she is able to graduate with whatever high honors a 12 out of 25 gets you in psych assignments and go on to parlay that into the graduate school or law school of her choice.

[Will Sommer]

The governor's going to weigh in, say A plus. You did great.

[jvl]

Guys. Hit like hit. Subscribe. Follow this channel for more. Absolute absurdity as we take this rocket sled to hell. He's Will Sommer. I'm jvl. We're from the Bulwark. Good luck America. What do you think makes the perfect snack?

[AMPM Advertiser]

Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it. And it's convenient.

[jvl]

Could you be more specific?

[AMPM Advertiser]

When it's cray venient okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at am, pm Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.

[jvl]

I'm seeing a pattern here.

[AMPM Advertiser]

Well yeah, we're talking about what I.

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

Crave, which is anything from am, pm.

[AMPM Advertiser]

What more could you want? Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience am, pm too much good stuff.