The demand for culture war content seems to be outstripping supply. That is one takeaway from Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA) attempt to take a shoddy student essay from the University of Oklahoma and turn it into a national story.

On Nov. 27, the University of Oklahoma chapter of TPUSA announced with mournful seriousness that junior Samantha Fulnecky received zero out of 25 possible points on an essay she submitted for a psychology class. (The fact that this is a real headline is a joke in and of itself—but let’s put that aside for the moment.) Students were asked to react to an article about “how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender.”

In her 650-word paper, Fulnecky argued in favor of traditional gender roles and did so exclusively by pointing to her beliefs as a Christian. So, her paper reads less like an academic rebuttal than an op-ed pitched to an evangelical magazine. If we’re being honest, it’s doubtful her essay would even merit acceptance in an outlet like that.

TPUSA stated that Fulnecky replied by “quoting the Bible,” but you will not find any quotes in her essay, because she did no such thing. She made one brief reference to the book of Genesis—that’s it. The rest of it consists of assertions prefaced with “God says.” It is also written as you might expect a college junior to write: poorly. And that is fine. No one expects Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy-style prose out of college students. However, TPUSA decided that a bad grade on a poor essay warranted nationwide outrage, highlighting that since the instructor of Fulnecky’s course is transgender, the bad grade is proof-positive of a sinister plot to discriminate against a Christian student.

The trouble is that anyone with eyes to see can read Fulnecky’s paper and determine that it is badly written and badly argued. There was no need to turn this girl into a martyr for intellectual freedom, and the fact that TPUSA did so speaks to its lack of seriousness. I think journalist Katya Ungerman summarized the debacle best.

“When I was in school, what annoyed me most about campus political organizations was their tendency to manufacture drama,” she wrote on X. “There was usually a kernel of truth. In this case, a zero is probably an overreaction but trying to turn it into a national news story is also an overreaction.”

The subsequent suspension of instructor Mel Curth was the biggest overreaction of all.

In a statement about the decision, the university said that it “takes seriously concerns involving First Amendment rights, including religious freedoms.” Curth has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into what Fulnecky alleges is a clear example of illegal discrimination based on her religious beliefs.

Does Curth harbor bias against conservatives? Probably. But it wouldn’t make much of a difference in this case, because Fulnecky wrote an objectively terrible essay devoid of supporting evidence. She easily could have marshaled a serious argument on behalf of her religious viewpoint with a modicum of effort and a few searches on the internet. A conservative student can find plenty of data and arguments in books like Thomas West’s Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America or Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. Instead, Fulnecky  did not make a real academic effort, but just scribbled down her passionately held beliefs. She was even too lazy to seriously engage with the Bible in her short essay. She deserves a bad grade, not a Medal of Freedom.

But what happens to a hapless and exploited college junior is less important than what this episode has revealed. Certain people on the right are quite fine with affirmative action, so long as the people they like are the beneficiaries. The new right is becoming a mirror image of the permanently aggrieved left, down to demanding the lowering of academic standards to placate the paroxysms it experiences at perceived offenses. Indeed, it appears to want to be persecuted and does not seem to know how to define itself without it. It has assumed an identity centered on being put upon, and if it is not being put upon, it will put a boot on its own neck and blame someone else for the pain. In doing so, it is taking a page out of the left-wing playbook it has long criticized.

TPUSA and those who have taken Fulnecky’s side are essentially in favor of an affirmative action system in which students who identify as conservative are held to a bar that has been comfortably set around their ankles. All they have to do is show up to class, announce their political alignment, and step over the beam to success. Anything more than that is, in their eyes, evidence of discrimination. Conveniently, manufacturing an outrage like this also drives attention and, therefore, donations.

Of course, the only thing this will accomplish is the coddling of people on the right, who will now demand to be gently handled with bubble wrap, addressed only in terms they approve, and have the primacy of their lived experiences regarded above all else. And if they do not get what they want, they will fabricate a scandal over nothing and get people suspended or even fired over it. I didn’t like this movie the first time. The sequel is shaping up to be just as bad.