Mel Curth, the University of Oklahoma graduate teaching assistant who became embroiled in national controversy after she gave a student a zero on an essay that referenced the Bible, was dismissed from her instructional duties, university officials said in a statement on X last month.

The university did not release the findings from its investigation into the student’s Title IV religious discrimination claim against Curth. But officials wrote that “based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant’s prior grading standards and patterns, as well as the graduate teaching assistant’s own statements related to this matter, it was determined that the graduate teaching assistant was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper. The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the University.”

Curth appealed the decision. She “fully denies that she engaged in any discriminatory behavior,” her attorney, Brittany Stewart, wrote in a statement on Bluesky. Stewart is a transgender Minnesota-based lawyer who has worked on other cases related to transgender discrimination in higher education. Through Stewart, Curth called the investigation “flawed” and said that it “failed to consider all possible motives and issues.”

In an email to OU officials, the student, Samantha Fulnecky, copied “overtly political actors, such as disgraced former Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters, who is known for his virulent anti-LGBTQ positions,” Stewart wrote. “Despite this fact, investigators failed to examine whether the student may have had an ulterior motive in pursuing such a complaint.”

Stewart wrote that the university has continued to issue public statements about the investigation “despite confidentiality rules that kept Ms. Curth from being able to discuss any details of the situation while the student was going on a circuit of local and national television interviews.”

Fulnecky has appeared on TV news shows including Fox News @ Night, The Will Cain Show and Griffin Media’s News 9. She also spoke at a luncheon held by the political group Original Constitution Principles Affecting Culture as well as a campus event held by Turning Point USA.

During an interview, Fulnecky said she “merely looked at the topic and then rushed together a response based on her personal feelings … because she was in a hurry to go see a play that evening with her friend,” Stewart said. The psychology class assignment asked students to respond to an academic article about how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender. In her essay, Fulnecky called transgender people “demonic” and said that she did not necessarily think peers teasing each other to enforce gender norms was a problem. She used her interpretation of the Bible to support her argument.

“Rather than engaging in discrimination, Mel Curth has been the target of a political movement that seeks to silence and/or oust LGBTQ people from academia,” Stewart wrote. “Ms. Curth will continue to fight back against these harmful allegations.”

In the December statement, university officials said they have “engaged in repeated and detailed conversations with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee to ensure there is an understanding of the facts, the process, and the actions being taken.”

But faculty are still calling for the university to share more information about how officials came to their decision to dismiss Curth from teaching. The OU American Association of University Professors chapter has also demanded that officials publicly affirm the university’s commitment to academics free from political interference and work with faculty to develop a “Harassment Response and Prevention Plan” for political attacks.

“OU has not informed OU faculty more broadly about the exact policies or criteria behind their determination of arbitrary grading or decision to dismiss the instructor. We also do not know whether the Faculty Senate Executive Committee had meaningful input or oversight in the process, nor do we know the extent of OU’s interactions with political actors that may have influenced its decision-making,” the OU AAUP wrote in a letter delivered to university president Joseph Harroz Jr. on Friday. “Ms. Curth’s attorney recently revealed that the student cc’d Governor Kevin Stitt and former Superintendent Ryan Walters on her original complaint to the University, once again raising serious questions about the politicized nature of OU’s actions.”

A petition supporting the OU AAUP’s requests to the university has garnered almost 25,000 signatures as of Monday evening.

“Dismissing a graduate student from instructional duties on a first offense is not an appropriate response. Besides concerns with academic freedom, dismissal shows a lack of commitment to the intellectual development and professional training of instructors,” the OU AAUP wrote in the letter to Harroz. “Our graduate students deserve better.”