Mount St. Mary’s President Pulls Glock on University, Gets Fired

This story now has a happy ending. It seems it took about a month for president Newman of Mount Saint Mary’s to finally get fired from his position. As first reported by the A Miner Detail, the school issued an anodyne statement that papered over the disaster that was Newman’s tenure:

“The board is grateful to President Newman for his many accomplishments over the past year, including strengthening the University’s finances, developing a comprehensive strategic plan for our future, and bringing many new ideas to campus that have benefitted [sic!] the entire Mount community,” said John Coyne, Chairman of the Mount St. Mary’s University Board of Trustees. “We thank him for his service.”

This sort of balderdash is necessary in our litigious culture, where nobody gets fired, instead, cogs are replaced. The Simon Newman cog should not be difficult to replace, and, thank God, he has amassed enough money from previous gigs to weather him until his next gig (if only we were all so lucky).  His new ideas where actually nothing new. They were instead “retention” numbers cooking that resembles a Ponzi Scheme. For more details on the numbers game Newman played see The Anazoa Project’s indispensable account of it.

It’s really embarrassing, but not quite as embarrassing as the actions and words of the president during his tenure, about which you can read below:

Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland continues to remain in a world of pain on the World Day of the Sick (the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes).

The nationwide controversy surrounding the university started with the firing of two faculty, one tenured, another one associated with a student paper, that published criticism of President Simon Newman.

UPDATE: Happy news, the university just reinstated those faculty.

At the center of the controversy are outrageous, borderline psychotic, statements made by President Newman.

The following thuggish comment from the Stanford and Oxford trained Newman got the most traction when it was published in a widely-circulated article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.

The Washington Post reports the bunnies are those students who are not ready for the cold and cruel corporate world. They report the surprisingly impolite Englishman once again talking like a drunk soccer hooligan:

Twenty-five percent of our students are dumb and lazy and I’d like to get rid of them . . . My short term goal is to have 20-25 people leave by the 25th.  This one thing will boost our retention 4-5%. A larger committee or group needs to work on the details but I think you get the objective.

The conservative among you might think he is right to take a tough stance against the general dumbing down of education and getting real about getting a job in our economy. (But the election cycle should remind you how much the Clintons and the rest of the Democrats also court corporate money. “It’s the economy, stupid.”) However, conservatism also entails reverence for tradition.

The latest email from the president demonstrates no such reverence. It is couched as something of an apology letter, but it is merely an apology for Apollo, not Christ. It is a middle finger pointed directly at the critics. No regrets.

You have to read the email whole to believe it. The following email, sent, it seems, yesterday, is taken from the Washington Post story mentioned above. A strange way to start out Lent, wouldn’t you say?

Dear Mount Parents,

Mount St. Mary’s University is in growth mode, and on the move. We are transforming our 200-year-old Catholic University to meet the needs of a demanding global economy. Your student is a part of this exciting transformation. We are building on our existing Liberal Arts core and Catholic Intellectual Tradition and preparing students for a more technical skills-based job market in a way that only The Mount can. Talk to any of our alums, and they will tell you how Mount Priests humanized our faith, and helped them grow into the people they are today. At The Mount, our true differentiator is and always has been the formation and the creation of the Mount Person, a person of character, of confidence, of wisdom, and of faith.

Over Christmas break, we asked our current students what they would like to see more of at The Mount. Well, they were very vocal, and their needs matched those of the guidance counselors, high school seniors and parents, that we also surveyed during this time. Your daughters and sons are attuned to what the job market has to offer and the skills they will need to have, in order to ensure a great career in whatever field they choose. We are going to share some of the results of our research with them in the next few weeks.

Remaining aligned with what the World needs requires change. Change is hard, and requires not only new thinking, but new ways of preparing students – now both inside the classroom, and through experiential learning opportunities.

I want to briefly address my decision to dismiss two faculty members who violated a number of our University policies and our code of ethics. We, as an institution, have received quite a bit of press recently and have chosen not to respond more forcefully with information about the specifics of their conduct which we have available to us. In keeping with our values, we will take the high road. But it is critical that you know that we would never undertake actions like that unless the conduct in question warranted it. You may see other versions of events, but we have chosen to restore our focus on educating your students rather than explaining the damaging actions of a few individuals. We need to move forward with hope and faith rather than fall prey to fear and disparity during this time of transition.

I am a father. My heart knows just who you have entrusted to our care. The education, safety, and ultimate future of your son or daughter is at the heart of why I am here and what I love about the Mount.

Follow our progress, see our university thrive with growth in its third century, but please know as a parent, that we are providing your student with a caring, welcoming, and academically strong environment. Students impacted by faculty changes will receive communication regarding their advising and class schedules.

For specific questions and concerns, please reach out to the Office of the Provost provost@msmary.edu.

Yours in Christ,
President Simon Newman

Is it just me, does “Remaining aligned with what the World” a little bit too close to the essence of the Devil’s temptations in the desert? And who among you were thinking of the hellish Frankenstein when you read about the “creation of the Mount Person”?  This Prometheanism sounds more like the characters you might encounter in The Drama of Atheist Humanism, or, Atlas Shrugged for that matter. It doesn’t sound very Catholic at all.

Furthermore, isn’t there a bit of a contradiction between priests who “humanize the faith” only to prepare the students to be “attuned to what the job market has to offer”? Is this what Catholic education has become? A crass factory of fodder for homo economicus?

Whatever happened to passing on the Catholic faith, which is profoundly counter-cultural in its resistance to turning any person, from conception to natural death, into a commodity?

I suppose it is only appropriate that this story surfaced again on the World Day of the Sick. The general lack of reporting on this matter from the Catholic press is a symptom of another profound sickness. This sickness will only become redemptive with much soul searching and a change of direction toward the Cross. If not, Catholics will continue to get burned by selling out to Prometheus.

Catholic News now reports further allegations that pit the school’s new direction against Catholic teaching:

Already facing turmoil, the second-oldest Catholic university in the country is now seeing alumni and former faculty members publicly expressing their concerns over President Simon Newman’s disparaging remarks about the college’s Catholic identity – even reportedly calling some students “Catholic jihadis.”

Thane Naberhaus, a tenured professor who was recently fired from the Maryland university, told CNA that the president wanted to downplay the school’s Catholic identity because, in his words, “Catholic doesn’t sell.”

Until things change and Catholic institutions stop taking money from vested interests like the Catholic University of America did when its business school took money from the Koch Brothers (who besides supporting a deregulated market also support gay marriage and abortion).

I’m sad to say neither Catholic University of America, nor Mount St. Mary’s, are unique.

Bang, bang! Catholic education is dying.

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UPDATE: Note how the President’s video in this link is all about inviting corporations onto campus, participating in the global “education industry,” and partying it up at what he calls “Mount 2.0.” God is only mentioned as an afterthought in the farewell. The video is so comical (Samuel Beckett funny) precisely because it is made in earnest and Mount St. Mary’s claims to be following the directives of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

You might also want to read: Prominent Polish Prelates and the Poisonous Fruit of Unbridled Capitalism.

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