On today’s show, Alex and Calvin cover a recent culture war controversy tailor-made for re:verb - the sanctioning of a University of Oklahoma Psychology instructor for giving a student a poor grade on their writing assignment. At issue in the controversy, however, is not just whether the student fully completed the assignment given its specifications and rubric, but rather her invocation of alleged “Christian” beliefs about the nature of sex and gender, as well as the elevation of the issue in right-wing media and politics by the conservative organization Turning Point USA. Is this an example of ideological and religious suppression at the hands of “Big Academia”? Or is it perhaps a more sinister media ploy on the part of the organization that elevated this issue to national prominence, to further demonize transgender and nonbinary people in American society?

Calvin and Alex break down the timeline of how this controversy played out, analyzing the assignment itself, portions of the student essay (all made public by TPUSA), and the response of University of Oklahoma administrators to the allegations of bias against the student. We contextualize these artifacts with our knowledge and experience in writing classrooms, asking if better assignment design could have pre-empted this issue entirely, or if the entire event would have been weaponized against a transgender instructor regardless. We also show how this controversy is part of a broader phenomenon, bringing in research from scholars who view organizations like TPUSA through the lens of surveillance culture: turning students into “watchdogs” in classrooms with alleged “liberal bias,” publicizing the names and faces of university faculty across national media, and providing red meat for a base of extreme supporters who make threats against colleges and their faculty. We conclude with some ways forward for faculty and others who face threats from these organizations, as well as the implications of this kind of surveillance culture for writing pedagogy more broadly.

Key Reference Material
Assignment Guidelines & Rubric:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vgjTfejwWz7Sw7voi57kwaVQAql3doSe/view

Article referenced in assignment guidelines:

Jennifer A. Jewell & Christia Spears Brown - “Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence” in Social Development

Samantha Fulnecky’s full essay:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qxnVi_yaJ-Fb9u1-A1Vy2vQT3Aiw8Nix/view

Instructor’s Comments on the Essay:

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/education/2025/11/25/ou-oklahoma-samantha-fulnecky-read-essay-gender-bible/87463858007/

University of Oklahoma Official Statement on the Issue:

https://x.com/UofOklahoma/status/1995186884704690262

Works and Concepts Cited in this Episode

AAUP Guidelines on Targeted Harassment of Faculty: https://www.aaup.org/issues-higher-education/political-attacks-higher-ed/targeted-harassment-faculty

Faculty First Responders Info on TPUSA: https://facultyfirstresponders.com/tpusa/

McCarthy, S. & Kamola, I. (2022). Sensationalized surveillance: Campus reform and the targeted harassment of faculty. New Political Science, 44(2): pp. 227-247. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2021.1996837

An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)