This Univ. of Oklahoma Essay is So Bad It Launched a Culture-War Career
There Are No Girls on the Internet
iHeartPodcasts
4.1 • 905 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
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Summary
In a psychology course at University of Oklahoma, junior Samantha Fulnecky was assigned to write a short essay responding to a research paper about social enforcement of gender typicality and children's mental health. Rather than engage with the assignment, she wrote a moralistic screed about demons and God's plan for women to be helpers, citing unspecified parts of "the Bible." Her paper received a zero, but she has become a cause celebre among right-wing culture warriors thanks to the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Points USA, who view her as a righteous victim being persecuted for her faith. Bridget and Producer Mike have both graded their share of college papers, so they weigh in on the fairness of her grade, and unpack what's really going on (spoiler: it's a stunt).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:08.1 | There are no girls on the internet as a production of IHeart Radio and UnBossed Creative. |
| 0:16.3 | I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. |
| 0:21.8 | As a former educator, we have got to talk about what's happening at the University of Oklahoma right now. |
| 0:27.6 | So in this episode, we'll start with why I think we're uniquely qualified to weigh in. |
| 0:32.7 | You'll hear the full Bible-based paper whose failing grade was heard around the country and our thoughts on it, |
| 0:39.3 | kind of treating it as a good faith assignment, but also what I think the entire thing is one |
| 0:45.3 | big scam. So let's get into it. Mike, you and I both have backgrounds as educators. That's right. |
| 0:52.7 | When I was in grad school for all of eight years, |
| 0:57.1 | I funded myself for much of that time through teaching assistantship. So I got to teach a couple |
| 1:03.0 | courses in psychology at a big university in the Midwest. So in some respects, similar to Oklahoma, |
| 1:10.2 | but in others, pretty different. |
| 1:12.3 | Yes. I also TA'd my way through graduate school, but then I started adjuncting. Did |
| 1:17.0 | you ever do any adjuncting? I never did any adjuncting, but honestly, I have been thinking |
| 1:22.5 | about it lately. I kind of miss teaching. And so this story, when you you brought it up kind of spoke to me, I guess. |
| 1:29.5 | I was like hungry to think about teaching. |
| 1:32.4 | Same. |
| 1:33.1 | By not adjuncting, you missed out on making like a whopping $2,000 a year. |
| 1:39.1 | It was not well paid work. |
| 1:41.5 | That is my sense of it. |
| 1:43.2 | Yeah. |
... |
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