An adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati who was accused of failing a student for using the term “biological women” on an essay confirmed the story, and is now suggesting that she herself is the victim — not the student she failed for perfectly normal English.
Olivia Krolczyk, the student who used the term “biological women” on an essay proposal about transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, never named the professor who failed her, but the Cincinnati Enquirer later did.
In an interview with the Cincinnati newspaper, adjunct professor Melanie Rose Nipper confirmed Krolczyk’s “sequence of events,” but claimed her review of the idea and the student’s language was simply a routine element of her duties as an educator.
Nipper said when a student uses “an outdated terminology,” she feels it is necessary to correct those so-called mistakes.
“Not a zero for the course, a zero for an assignment,” Nipper said.
The professor ironically went on to insist that she believes classrooms should be places for debate and discussion, but that all of that ends when “you are, intentionally or unintentionally, participating in a systemic harm of some kind.”
Nipper, an adjunct professor in the University of Cincinnati Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies department cited transphobia and white supremacy as examples.
In a social media that went viral, Krolczyk said that she had gotten “a zero on a project proposal in my class,” because she used the term, “biological women” in an essay.
In a written comment on Krolczyk’s essay, Nipper informed the student that “This is unacceptable based on the community, the marginalized individuals that are at stake, and also the foundations of the course.”
Nipper said she cried when she the student’s video, adding, “It’s a lot, right? It’s a lot to handle.”
The professor also cited Ohio’s SB 83 legislation, saying it created a “chilling effect,” and limits the future “other academics, friends, peers that I’ve had from a variety of different cohorts, feel they’ll be able to have in this country.”
Nipper, who gave Krolczyk a zero on her essay for using a term that is biologically correct, ironically went on to complain about “authoritarianism.”
“We’ve seen historically in other countries what happens when laws like this can take effect. The way that they are connected to larger societal, cultural movements towards authoritarianism,” she said.
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