The whining and hand-wringing over the “Fulnecky incident” at OU is still going strong, and honestly, it’s getting ridiculous.
There’s nothing wrong with people offering thoughtful disagreement or perspectives shaped by their own experiences. I’ve read plenty of reasonable commentary from all sides of this mess.
But this newest idea—that OU students should get tuition refunds or emergency transfer help because of one grading dispute—is flat-out absurd. It’s right up there with the melodramatic Christian fundamentalists who swear they’re being oppressed because Starbucks printed a snowflake on a cup or someone dared to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”
It’s the same emotional formula dressed up differently: I’m uncomfortable, therefore I’m under attack, therefore someone owes me compensation.
Let’s get serious. A university’s scientific reputation isn’t shattered because one student wrote a flawed essay and got upset about a grade or the administration may have mishandled its reaction to it. Academia has survived bigger scandals—plagiarism, falsified research, professors behaving outrageously, whole departments imploding—and somehow the degrees still carry weight.
Yet now we’re supposed to believe OU biology majors think their diplomas are contaminated over this? Come on.
And demanding tuition refunds because the university didn’t resolve the situation the way you personally wanted? That’s not activism—that’s a tantrum.
What makes it worse is that all of this is happening in a moment when people are already tired of how much coddling students and faculty seem to expect from universities. The public sees grown adults acting like the slightest ideological discomfort entitles them to money, special treatment or a hand-delivered transfer plan.
They’re exhausted by campuses trying to bubble-wrap every emotion, every opinion, every interaction. And when faculty join that chorus, it only reinforces the perception that universities are allergic to anything resembling real-world friction.
Universities are messy environments. Particularly in today’s political environment. Administrators, faculty, politics, public pressure, student expectations—they all collide constantly. That’s not a crisis; that’s just higher ed. The fact this controversy has led some to spiral about the value of their degree says more about their insecurity than it does the university.
Calling OU’s credibility “permanently tarnished” because of this incident isn’t some noble stand for academic integrity or freedom. It’s the same version of doomsday Christians claiming civilization is collapsing because they don’t control the narrative anymore. It’s fragile, it’s dramatic and—ironically—it mimics the very faux-persecution routine these students claim to be above.
If anything, this whole situation reveals how quickly outrage replaces common sense. If one messy grading dispute threatens your belief in your education, the problem isn’t the school’s rigor—it’s your resilience.
What’s happening at OU is, at its core, a master class in institutional failure—an example of how a handful of small missteps can snowball into a full-blown political firestorm. Still, universities are nothing if not laboratories of experience, and OU—once everyone stops shouting long enough to assess what actually went wrong—will almost certainly learn from the process.
Cindy Allen 