Dive Brief:
- Mount Saint Mary College in New York is not facing a student retention scandal like Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, but the college is struggling with an identity crisis as leadership seems to pull it toward more conservative Catholicism.
- Inside Higher Ed reports faculty are speaking out against trustees’ active participation in hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions, as well as one board member’s confrontation with a faculty member over a critical social media post of another board member, who said Muslims and Jews have no supernatural faith.
- The Dominican institution has historically been open to people of all faiths, but campus leaders have more recently sought out Catholics for open positions and dismissed a faculty member who was critical of a proposal to require a religion course in the core curriculum.
Dive Insight:
The Maryland Mount St. Mary’s University’s scandal escalated following national attention on the institution because of a student newspaper story chronicling its president’s desire to cull the freshman class. The student newspaper advisor, another faculty member, and the provost were fired or asked to step down, and a faculty member who quoted the president’s now infamous “drown the bunnies” statement was expected to be the next to go. Two faculty, however, have since been reinstated, Inside Higher Ed reports.
The suspected overreach by trustees at the New York Mount Saint Mary College mirrors a similar refrain at state schools that are dealing with more activist boards appointed by conservative legislatures. In North Carolina and Wisconsin, especially, campus culture could be in danger because of the actions of elected officials.