The faculty of a Catholic Maryland university voted overwhelmingly to unseat their embattled president, who crassly compared to struggling freshman to bunnies that need to be shot while announcing a controversial plan to offer tuition refunds to failing students who choose to leave on in the semester.
Mount St. Mary’s University faculty voted 87-3 Friday night to ask Simon Newman to resign. The condemning vote came even after the president announced earlier in the day that he was reinstating the staffers he ousted.
“It has become apparent that negative public attention has interfered with our ability to continue in our work and to bring new students and faculty to this campus,” the faculty wrote in a letter to Newman.
Newman drew criticism on campus earlier this month for his so-called student-retention plan — and national outrage for the crude language he used while defending the policy.
The Catholic college boss planned to identify the freshmen most likely to fail and offer tuition refunds to those who chose to leave early in their first semester.
“This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads,” he allegedly wrote in an email to a faculty member who opposed the plan.
The email was leaked to the student newspaper, which promptly published the tactless comparison.
Newman acknowledged and apologized for the comment, while the Board of Trustees launched an investigation into the Morning Echo’s embarrassing report.
On Monday, the president fired tenured philosophy professor Thane Naberhaus and pre-law program director Edward Egan, only to reinstate them on Friday.
In his letter dismissing Naberhaus, Newman wrote that the professor had violated “a duty of loyalty” to the university. The university has said in a statement that Egan violated “the code of conduct and acceptable use policies.”
But Egan said he believes he was fired because he is the student newspaper adviser. Both Naberhaus and Egan opposed the brutal student retention plan.
The faculty firings prompted more than 8,100 college faculty members nationwide to sign an online petition calling for their reinstatement.
Board of Trustees member Rev. Kevin Farmer said the board still supports Newman, a former financial-industry executive hired in 2014 to lead the college in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Newman has said he’d like to double enrollment, currently about 2,300, and transform the liberal arts school “to meet the needs of a demanding global economy.”
“We embrace his vision for the future of the university and believe he is the best person to carry it out,” Farmer said in the statement.
After they’re accepted, “you have an obligation in my opinion to provide them with programs and services to help them be successful,” he said.
With News Wire Services
