We’ve got a fresh new culture-war skirmish to trigger our anger, outrage, and attention!
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the hard-to-avoid saga of OU junior Samantha Fulnecky erupted across the social webs. If you were lucky enough to miss it, congratulations – please tell me which cave you’re living in and if there’s room for one more. This idiocracy out here is getting exhausting to cover.
Here’s the basic gist of this one…
Samantha – a conservative OU tennis player from Missouri whose mom just happens to be a right-wing activist attorney – was given an essay question in her OU psychology class about gender stereotypes.
Instead of responding with anything resembling scientific reasoning, research, or even something copied off ChatGPT, Samantha went with the bold academic approach of:
“Gender roles and stereotypes are fine because that’s what my God wants.”
Check this out:
Yep. Nothing screams “Give me an A, teacher!” quite like citing God as your primary source to not only defend gender stereotypes but also justify mocking and teasing people. That’s truly groundbreaking scholarship! Let’s pray her professors never assign anything on eugenics or the Holocaust — I’d hate to see what divine wisdom she’d cook up for those topics.
Let’s check out Page 2:
Listen — as a guy who lives in a house filled with Barbies, unicorns, and Labubus, I actually agree with Samantha on one thing – it's perfectly okay for kids to follow gender stereotypes, but you can’t cite “that’s the way God made us!” as evidence. That cheating!
You see, psychology is a science class, not a course on ancient human myths and religions! You have to prove stuff with evidence and data and sources that exists beyond the very sheltered and limited world view stuck in your head, so at least do the MAGA thing and make up figures or alternate facts to defend your case!
Unsurprisingly, the instructor — a transgender woman named Mel Curth — gave Samantha a 0 out of 25, accompanied by a scathing and well-documented explanation of why the essay was lazy, poorly reasoned, and not even close to meeting the requirements of the assignment.
Listen. Was it a bad essay deserving of an F? Yes. But a zero seems harsh. Sure, the entire thing was probably written by her mom in an attempt to reach maximum outrage, but at least give her a couple of points for turning her paper in on time!
Instead of treating this like a learning moment — i.e., “You can’t answer college essay questions with ‘My God said so!’” — Samantha took her grievance to Turning Point USA, who gleefully turned it into a transphobic X/Twitter screed.
Their version framed Samantha as a saintly, angelic victim who bravely stood up for her faith against a “mentally ill” professor. The tweets went viral to the tune of 50–100 million views, blasting the story across both left- and right-wing echo chambers and shoving OU into the center of the latest manufactured culture-war meltdown.
As the outrage snowballed, Samantha filed a grade dispute and a discrimination complaint against the teacher. OU – apparently fearing Fox News – automatically placed Curth on administrative leave. Turning Point OU celebrated like OU scored a rare offensive touchdown.
Anyway, I promised you a gist, and that’s the long one. Beyond that, I don’t have especially strong thoughts about this latest chapter in Oklahoma Culture War Theatre.
Well, except that I want it to just go away.
Seriously, from the essay itself, to the perfectly timed TPUSA rollout, to the outrage from influencers and social bots, the whole thing feels contrived and processed. I want my culture war topics to be whole grain organic, not taste like it was whipped up in a right-wing FACTOR test kitchen.
I understand the story brings likes, views, and — in the case of Mel Curth — has real-world implications, but at a certain point, even covering these manufactured controversies feels like helping the bad actors win.
Then again, maybe I shouldn't complain too much.
Although Samantha is likely a right-wing plant vying to become the Riley Gains of the MAGA tennis world, it has been fun to see people hit ace after ace against her on the social media courts.
Anyway, we’ll continue to follow this story and all its twists and turns. Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
