OzeEssay: The Essay That Was Never Really About the Essay University of Oklahoma, December 11, 2025 – A Final Dispatch It began as almost nothing: a junior pressed “submit” [OzeEssay](https://www.ozessay.com.au/) on a routine reaction paper and went to bed. Twenty-seven days later, the same 682 words have forced a transgender teaching assistant into hiding, cost the university hundreds of thousands of dollars in security and legal fees, turned a 20-year-old psychology major into a conservative celebrity, and quietly killed the last remaining “tell me how you really feel” assignment in half the social-science departments in Oklahoma. The paper itself is now public in full. It is not subtle. Samantha Fulnecky thanks the researchers for showing that gender-nonconforming kids suffer more, then spends the next five paragraphs explaining that the suffering exists because society has rejected Genesis 1:27 and embraced “a demonic lie from the enemy.” She calls non-binary identity a form of rebellion against God, insists that true mental health is found only in repentance, and ends with a short prayer for courage. That is the entire offense. There is no slur, no call for violence, no direct insult to any individual. Just blunt, unapologetic evangelical framing delivered to the one person on earth least equipped to receive it neutrally: a transgender graduate teaching assistant named Mel Curth. Curth gave the paper a zero the same day they read it. The comment was short and final: psychology is a scientific discipline, scripture is not evidence, and describing LGBTQ+ existence as demonic violates basic standards of respect in an academic setting. No rewrite was offered. Office hours were cancelled that week. The conversation ended before it began. Everything that followed happened at internet speed. Within forty-eight hours the screenshots were on X, then Gab, then every conservative podcast inbox in America. Within four days Curth’s full name, photo, and campus office location were circulating. By day eight the first death threat arrived. By day twelve Curth was off campus with university-provided security, and the tenured professor who actually owns the course had still not said a public word. Money poured in from both directions. Fulnecky’s GiveSendGo crossed a quarter million dollars in under two weeks. A GoFundMe for Curth’s therapy and relocation expenses hit six figures before the platform froze it pending extra verification. Politicians weighed in: the governor, both U.S. senators, and the state attorney general all found a way to mention “anti-Christian bias” before Thanksgiving. Yet the closer you look, the less the controversy is actually about religion, free speech, or even academic standards. It is about proximity and power. A devout student wrote something she has probably said out loud in church a hundred times. She submitted it to the single human being whose very existence the essay labeled demonic. The TA, already marginal on a graduate stipend and aware of every campus shooting of the last decade, pushed the only button available: a zero and a locked door. Neither of them had the option of calm discussion. The student had already been taught that compromise on this issue is itself satanic. The instructor had already been taught that language like this is a predictor of real-world harm. They were never going to meet in the middle because neither believes a middle exists. The rest of us watched it explode and picked the team that lets us feel righteous for five minutes. By February the grade will quietly become a C-minus, someone will write someone else a check, and every syllabus in the state will carry a new disclaimer about “appropriate discourse.” Students will learn to self-censor before they hit submit, instructors will learn to grade with one eye on the comments section, and both sides will claim total victory.