Oklahoma: Trans Instructor Suspended After Student Called Her Peers ‘Demonic’ in a Poor Quality Essay Which Cited No Sources

The suspension appears to be a response to calculated right-wing attacks.

By Jane Migliara Brigham

Yesterday, a trans instructor at the University of Oklahoma was put on administrative leave following poorly-evidenced complaints of discrimination by a student with deep ties to christian nationalist politics.

Last month, Samantha Fulnecky, a junior in the Psychology program, submitted an essay on the origin of gender roles to a class run by Mel Curth, a trans grad student who was teaching the class.  

Fulnecky’s  essay alluded to The Bible and ‘biblical gender norms’ without citing any sources.  Not even The Bible itself was cited as a source.  As a result, the essay was graded at 0%.

Fulnecky then appealed to the campus chapter of Turning Point USA, the far-right campus activism organization formerly fronted by Charlie Kirk.  

TPUSA in turn made the incident into a national scandal by accusing instructor Curth of anti-christian bias. The fact that Curth is trans was prominent in all right-wing reporting on the issue.

Yesterday, the university put out a press release saying that Mel Curth has been placed on indefinite administrative leave pending an investigation into the matter.  

The announcement was placed on X, but not their own website.

It is notable that this controversy and administrative action took place over a 4-day weekend, meaning that most discussion of the matter took place when most people involved would have been away from campus and unable to respond.

At the same time, the university has taken action to remove Mel Curth from their public image.

All pictures and references to her name have been removed from the University’s Instagram page, but references to her deadname were left up.  

Much of the university’s praise of her is still up on their Linkedin as of writing.  3 weeks ago, she received the “Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award” from the Department of Psychology.  

According to the University’s post, the award is meant to honor “graduate instructors who demonstrate exceptional teaching skill, dedication to student growth, and innovation in the classroom.”  This praise cannot be seen from the University Instagram, which is far more visible.

The university has also taken steps to prevent people from speaking with her, as her university email has been scrubbed from the faculty website, and attempts to reach this email are met with an error message implying that it has been internally disabled. 

This error message was confirmed when The Needle received it during our attempts to verify aspects of this story.  

The same has been done to Megan Waldron, a cis colleague of Mel’s who publicly defended her from accusations of anti-christian bias.  Like Mel, she was also given public awards by the University.

Samantha Fulnecky, the student whose complaint started all this, is the daughter of Kristi Fulnecky, a lawyer who represented clients who were at the January 6th attempted coup. 

During one trial, Samantha travelled out to DC to support these defendants alongside her mother.

In the past few days, Kristi has shared posts stating that “individuals who identify as trans should be automatically disqualified from holding any position as a teacher or professor”.  

Given these statements, as well as her ties to the far-right, her daughter’s claims to have suffered anti-christian bias are not the most credible.