OKLAHOMA CITY –
Newly filed bills hoping to change higher education in Oklahoma after the viral fallout of a failed Bible essay are one step closer to becoming law.
House Bill 3700, filed by Rep. Chad Caldwell (R-Enid), would require higher education institutions to grade students solely based on their attendance and academic performance, not a student’s opinions or beliefs. Institutions that do not comply could risk having state-appropriated funds withheld by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.
Rep. Caldwell said the bill was inspired by his work as the creator and member of the Oklahoma Free Speech Committee, where he found a similar grading policy written by Rose State College and found that other Oklahoma universities and colleges did not have a policy like it to date.
“It’s not stating that a professor can’t disagree, can’t challenge those beliefs, but if you’re going to grade, which is an academic exercise, it should be based on academic criteria, not the personal beliefs of a student,” Rep. Caldwell said during Tuesday’s committee meeting. “I don’t think we want to have teachers up there dictating and rewarding students who agree with them and negatively impacting the students they disagree with.”
Committee member Rep. Michelle McCane (D-Tulsa) highlighted concerns with the bill “usurping local control” from institutions, pointing back to the OU incident as an example.
“[Students] are enrolled, and they’re paying money to attend or taking out loans to attend, so they’ve agreed to those circumstances, and it just sounds like this is very much in response to that specific situation in which that student was not graded on their opinion – they were graded on the content of the essay,” argued Rep. McCane.
The House bill passed out of the House Postsecondary Education Committee on party lines with a 6-2 vote on Tuesday. Both “no” votes were from the only two Democratic lawmakers on the committee.
Senate Majority Floor Leader Julie Daniels (R-Bartlesville) was added to the House bill as a co-author. The measure now heads to the Education Oversight Committee for debate before it can move to the House floor.
At the same time, Sen. Daniels’ Senate Bill 1726 also cleared a first committee vote on Tuesday. The measure would require higher education institutions to provide formal training to graduate students who are instructors of undergraduate courses. The bill text states the training program should “emphasize that students shall not be penalized or disadvantaged in grading, participation, or evaluation on the basis of lawful expression.”
Lawmakers in the Senate Education Committee passed the bill on Tuesday with a 9-2 vote. The three Democratic senators in the committee voted differently: two voted “no,” while one joined Republicans in voting for it.
The bill’s title was stricken during the committee meeting, which happens when a title does not necessarily reflect the contents of a bill accurately. The measure is now headed to the Appropriations Committee.
These bills were filed after the University of Oklahoma was put in the national spotlight for a failed essay. University leadership fired graduate teaching assistant Mel Curth in December following a religious discrimination complaint filed by OU junior Samantha Fulnecky.
Fulnecky had claimed Curth discriminated against her when failing her essay about gender roles for a psychology assignment. OU’s investigation concluded Curth was “arbitrary” when issuing the failing grade. Curth’s attorney told News 9 in December that the graduate student denied the allegations and was appealing her termination.
