At a public university in the United States of America, a student turned in what she believed was a straightforward assignment: read an academic article, write a response, and offer personal reflection. That’s what the syllabus asked for. That’s what the professor advertised. And that’s what the student — Samantha Fulnecky, a freshman at the University of Oklahoma — did.
She read the assigned article on gender norms and peer relations in childhood development. Afterwards, she wrote a considered, sincere reflection rooted in her Christian worldview. She said she believed that God created male and female, purposely and distinctly. She argued that rejecting biological reality leads to deep personal harm, especially for children, and that embracing dozens of self-invented genders is not progress but confusion. All of it was written respectfully. All of it was authentic. And all of it should have been welcomed in a college classroom supposedly devoted to open inquiry.
Instead, her teaching assistant gave her a zero — explicitly because her views were “offensive” and “lacked empirical evidence.” She didn’t fail because she didn’t do the assignment. She failed because she didn’t worship at the altar of cultural orthodoxy. She failed for the crime of quoting Scripture. She failed because she dared to articulate what billions of people across centuries have believed without controversy: that male and female are real, designed, intentional, and good.
This is not a debate. It is punishment. It is ideological enforcement dressed up in academic language.
We were once a nation where universities prided themselves on the marketplace of ideas. Now they behave more like doctrinal tribunals, where the only tolerated creed is radical progressivism, and where the most persecuted identity in higher education today is not race, gender, or ethnicity — it is Christian.
When a student can receive a zero simply for articulating that gender is not an emotional feeling but a biological reality — when an institution funded by taxpayer dollars punishes a viewpoint held by the overwhelming majority of humanity across millennia — then the problem is not one troubled T.A. The problem is a culture, constructed deliberately, that rewards conformity and punishes conviction.
We are not talking about a private school with a specific theological framework. We are talking about a public university bound by the First Amendment. Yet time and again across the country, “free speech” now means: say whatever you want — as long as it agrees with the people grading you.
If Fulnecky had said gender is a spectrum, or that pronouns should change by the hour, or that science can be overridden by personal feelings, she likely would have received full credit — perhaps applause for “courage.” If she had written that Christianity is hateful, she might have received extra credit. But because she said God designed male and female, she was told she had committed an academic offense worthy of total failure.
This is not education. This is suppression. It is viewpoint discrimination. It is the silencing of religious faith in spaces where the Constitution says it must be permitted to speak freely.
And it is not accidental. The modern university has been slowly transformed from a place where ideas were tested by argument into a place where orthodoxy is enforced by fear. Students whisper after class. Students pre-edit their thoughts. Students say what they do not believe just to avoid being socially executed or academically penalized. Students of faith walk into class already knowing: I am guilty unless I hide what I believe.
The saddest part is that this message is working. Many young Christians today feel pressure to treat their convictions like contraband — hidden, concealed, whispered only among trusted friends. They know that telling the truth might cost them their grade, their scholarship, their letter of recommendation, and even their future. That is exactly how tyrannies operate: by teaching the accused to police themselves.
Fulnecky, however, did not go quietly. She filed a formal complaint of religious discrimination. The University of Oklahoma responded by placing the graduate instructor on leave and nullifying the grade. Whether that was justice or damage control depends on whether their policies change, whether faculty are trained to defend — not suppress — viewpoint diversity, and whether future students are protected rather than punished.
But understand this clearly: the reversal only came because she refused to be silent.
If the church is looking for a moment to finally wake up, this is it. If parents want to know why so many of their children go to college and come home strangers to their faith, this is why. If we wonder why so many younger generations view Christianity with suspicion, maybe it is because the culture they live in treats it like contraband.
Believers must stop shrinking back. Speak truth. Speak it with clarity. Speak it with grace. But speak it.
Because if we allow public institutions to intimidate and penalize us into silence, then we will not merely lose freedom — we will have surrendered it without a fight.
And that is a failing grade we will have earned.