Bulwark Takes - OK Governor Jumps Into a Fight Over a Homework Assignment

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

JVL and Will Sommer give their take on the latest culture-war absurdity: a 650-word psych class reaction paper at the University of Oklahoma that somehow escalated all the way to the governor’s office and right-wing media ecosystem. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES. Promo Code BULWARKTAKES

Hey there, I'm JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Will Summer. 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. So this is the story that has all of America captivated. As you said, it focuses on a University of Oklahoma undergraduate named Samantha Fulnicki. She wrote an essay for her psych class that was meant to be a response to an article about gender roles. And she wrote, you know, weirdly they published the essay so we know what it says. It was 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's suspended one of the grad students involved in the grading here. So it's truly crazy. It's gotten to this level. So I think we should stipulate to a couple 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. 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 students and the grad student about why the grade was given. And I have this is a terrible essay. And it could have been written by Chad GPT. For all I know, maybe it was. I don't know. I think Chad GPT would

have done a better job probably. Maybe, maybe. But 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 argument? 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, you said mean things, which are hurtful to people. I think Samantha kind of has a point here. This is the assignment. Am I being a crazy person? I don't think you're being crazy.

I think a zero. Yeah. A zero? I do think a lot. lot of the conservative reaction year has focused on the idea of a zero. And I think if you read it, you say, what is a C, maybe a D? I mean, depending on how intensely you grade these sort of reaction essays, but I do think a zero perhaps seems, seems pretty, that seems sort of like plagiarism level or, you know, somehow fabricating evidence or something like that. But I agree with you.

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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. I don't want to both sides here, but the reactions of the TAs, and here we have one of

the TAs saying, please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting 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 owe you. But if you're paying full freight to owe you and you're being graded by a grad student, not a professor, just a grad student, and they're like tossing this at you, like, I'd kind of be pissed too.

Am I a crazy person? Am I red-pilled, Will? No, I don't think it does. I mean, look, I as kind of a commissuer of bad writing, I was thrilled at the local turning point chapter post. 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 were really roasting this. But I kind of think the average undergrad essay anywhere would probably not look that good if scrutinized. I do think there's this aspect of, you know, as we said, I think the

zero is suspicious. I think 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, you know, if you feel there's been professorial bias. But in this case, the answer is, you know, go to turning point and let's make it a national sense. So that's where I kind of get off the bus. So again, I'm super, like, I'm basically there for this. And if Samantha was going through the university process of appealing a grade and saying, like,

hey, I think I got a bad TA here, I'd be fully invested in it. 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 deeply concerning?

Or is it just like, hey, this is not good, and the undergraduate should go. get a better grade for this one midterm paper that probably doesn't affect anything in her life, period? 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 should say, you know, 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, you know, it's getting to a position where you'd say, oh, hey, you did great. You know, great stuff. Just kind of let's get you out of my class for the semester. Yeah. And again, I don't think that the teachers should have to do that even. But again, like they just should have done better than this. Like I just think that the student here is actually in the right, almost into. disputably. But the weirdness of turning it into a federal case like this strikes me that, like, perhaps their motivations weren't entirely pure. I don't know. Like, is this entrapment? 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 sidesing. 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 site class out in Oklahoma.

So you see, that's how we got Trump. Yeah, I mean, these are the sort of the classic, 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 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 text messages to the essay. I guess, 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 that 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 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 start a fire and then pour a ton of gasoline on it in order to, I don't know, to do what, to score points? 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 lives of TikToks that 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. What a world we are living in, Will Summer. You know, 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. 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 in 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. The governor's going to weigh in, say A plus. You did great. Guys, hit like, hit subscribe, follow this channel for more absolute absurdity as we take this rocket sled to hell. He's Will Summer. I'm JVL. We're from the bulwark.

Good luck, America.