College President Says Students Are Like "Bunnies You Just Have To Drown Or Put A Glock To Their Heads"
Esquire – When discussing a controversial plan to weed out freshman students who are underperforming at Mount St. Mary’s University, the new president of the school told a group of resistant professors, “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,” according to the campus newspaper, the Mountain Echo.
Simon Newman was reportedly discussing a strategy to dismiss 20 to 25 freshmen who the professors thought would be likely to drop out by the end of the academic year. By pushing out the students, Newman hoped to improve the Maryland school’s student retention numbers.
The school paper quoted Greg Murry, director of the Veritas Symposium, who recalled Newman making the shocking statements when meeting with a small group of professors. Economics professor John Larrivee confirmed Murry’s account of the meeting.
But now, Newman is backtracking on his statements.
“The inferences, the innuendo, it’s not accurate at all—the conclusions one would naturally draw from reading it,” Newman told The Washington Post. He admitted, however, that he didn’t remember his exact language.
“I’ve probably done more swearing here than anyone else,” Newman added. “It wasn’t intended to be anything other than, ‘Some of these conversations you may need to have with people are hard.'”
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Heard there was a ton of outrage about this at Mount St Mary’s. Quick Twitter search confirmed – everyone is demanding President Newman be fired immediately. Probably tortured and thrown in jail too while we’re at it. Umm for what exactly? Dropping truth bombs? Some freshmen weren’t trying and were about to drop out, which would have negatively affected the school, so why not just dismiss them? Makes sense to me.
Was the language and the imagery a little intense? Sure. But it’s not like the guy hopped up to a podium in front of a school assembly with 20 news cameras on him and told everyone he wanted to drown them and shoot them in the head. He said it in a closed-door meeting with a small group of professors. Wanted to drive his point home with a metaphor. A super strong metaphor, but it clearly got everyone’s attention. And maybe it’s hard to hear but it’s just the cold hard facts of life. Not every student is a cuddly bunny. Some are rabid, lazy, stupid bunnies who are dragging the bunny retention numbers way down and reflecting poorly on the bunny college’s standing and harming future classes of bunnies. Got to do the best thing for every bunny involved and drown them and blow their brai…ehh, maybe just send them hopping on their bunny way to the next school that might be better suited for them.
#FreeSimonNewman