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Over the past week, Fox News Digital’s Campus Radicals series uncovered threats, animus and extremism directed at conservative college students and organizations across the country.
Below are this week’s highlights:
Christian University of Oklahoma student graded 0 on essay
Samantha Fulnecky, a pre-med junior at Oklahoma’s flagship university, vaulted into viral fame when she was flunked after invoking her Christian, biblical values in an essay.
Graduate assistant William “Mel” Curth, who uses she/they pronouns, is now on administrative leave as the school sorts out why Fulnecky was assessed a 0 out of 25 on the recent assignment. Students were directed to read a scholarly paper about gender norms and offer a “thoughtful reaction or response.”
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“Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered ‘stereotypes,'” a portion of Fulnecky’s essay said. “Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind.”
After Fulnecky argued that gender norms should be reinforced instead of frowned upon, Curth called her paper “offensive” and said it lacked empirical evidence, which was not part of the grading rubric for the assignment.
“Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point [sic] for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive,” Curth’s response said.
Fulnecky fired back.
“I definitely think that I was being punished for what I believe because I very clearly stated in my essay in my response to the article, I very clearly stated my beliefs and stated what — not just my beliefs — but what the Bible and what God says about gender and about those roles,” she told Fox News Digital.
The university restored her grade and is further investigating the matter.
Muslim club sparks fear in Jewish students in Pennsylvania
A Muslim student club promoting Palestinians passed out keffiyehs featuring anti-Israel criticism at a high school outside Philadelphia.
The disturbing scene played out at the Wissahickon School District’s annual culture fair at the Muslim Students Association booth, and left a Jewish student unsettled, according to the student’s parent.
“My child came home shaken and unsure of whether it’s even safe to speak up as a Jew at school,” Lynn Simon told Fox News Digital.
District administrators, including Superintendent Mwenyewe Dawan, Assistant Superintendent Sean Gardiner and Wissahickon High School Principal Dr. Lynne Blair, participated in the event, and even posted photos from the scene. Those photos have since been deleted.
Parents said some of the offensive slogans included “Jerusalem is ours.”
“When the principal is posting pictures of students wearing slogans like ‘Jerusalem is ours,’ and the superintendent is encouraging illegal minor-led games of chance, while visiting and taking photos with politically charged booths dressing students up in keffiyehs, that’s not education—it’s indoctrination,” Simon said. “We don’t send our kids to school to be marginalized. We demand accountability, not photo ops.”
Christian university blocks Students for Life chapter
Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, California, blocked a student from starting a chapter of Students For Life, despite being a Christian school.
The decision, which left pro-life student Linda-Isabella Rendon disappointed, stems from the school’s policy that bars organizations with ties to national political groups.
“We tried to start the Students for Life chapter here at Vanguard, and we went through the same club application that everyone goes through when they want to start a club,” Rendon told Fox News Digital. “We applied, we got student names that were interested, and after we submitted the application, we were told that the club was going to be denied due to political and ideological reasons. The school didn’t want to have any political or ideological affiliations.”
After a boost from Students for Life’s national leadership, which sparked further conversation with Vanguard’s administration, Rendon was approved to start a club called “Vanguard Lions Love Life,” but that club is unaffiliated with Students for Life in an official capacity.
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Pro-life Maine college students warned to ‘be careful’ of ending up like Charlie Kirk
An anonymous opponent of a new Students for Life chapter at the University of Southern Maine (USM) issued a stark threat to their pro-life counterparts.
“[T]hese Charlie Kirk enthusiasts gotta be careful don’t they know what happened to the guy,” the post, which did not include punctuation, said.
USM junior Jadyn Carrigan, a pro-lifer, wasn’t deterred by the threat.
“I think that, you know, every person has the right to exercise their, their free speech, and that’s exactly what myself and my club members are here to do,” she told Fox News Digital. “We’re not here with any malicious intent. We’re not here really even to argue. We’re here to have respectful dialogue, and that’s the whole beauty of democracy is hearing both sides of the spectrum, whatever that is.”
“I think myself, as well as my other club members, are doing the best we can to not fight hate with hate, but show everyone the respect that they deserve, regardless of their opinion,” she said.
New Orleans TPUSA chapter stymied — again
For the second time in a month-and-a-half, the student government at Loyola University of New Orleans barred a Turning Point USA chapter from becoming a registered student organization (RSO).
The saga began when Turning Point-affiliated students were denied a charter by Loyola’s student government association (SGA) on Oct. 15. They later appealed the decision to the school’s court of review.
That court found flaws in the SGA’s reason for barring the chapter, but the remedy was to send the case back before the SGA, which denied TPUSA in the first place.
On Wednesday night, the SGA once again denied Turning Point as a small group protested outside the meeting.
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Law student and Turning Point supporter Ethan Estis slammed the decision as “pure politics.”
“In my ultimate opinion, no organization, no matter if it is TPUSA or [Students for a Democratic Society] … should be grated [sic] or denied RSO status by members of the SGA, who are themselves an RSO,” he said. “It is not right, and we aim to correct this wrong using any means that are both necessary and proper.”
The school says it respects the SGA’s autonomy, and noted that there is no limit to the number of appeals that Turning Point can make.
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