Note: After our original story aired, Mount St. Mary's University announced that President Simon Newman resigned, effective immediately. The text has been updated.Simon Newman, the embattled college president who likened struggling freshmen students to "bunnies" to be drowned or shot, resigned Monday, following weeks of turmoil surrounding his leadership.“The board is grateful to President Newman for his many accomplishments over the past year," said John Coyne, chairman of the Mount St. Mary's University board of trustees, in a statement announcing the decision. Those accomplishments included "strengthening the University’s finances, developing a comprehensive strategic plan for our future, and bringing many new ideas to campus,” he said.One of those ideas became extremely controversial. Like many colleges, Mount St. Mary's, in Emmitsburg, Maryland, has struggled with low freshman retention. Newman's plan: within the first several weeks of the year, the school would identify 20 to 25 freshman who were at risk of dropping out and invite them to leave early, with a refund. When faculty members objected, Newman said something that soon made national headlines: “You think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t,” he said, according to student newspaper the Mountain Echo. “You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”Newman wanted this done “before they needed to report statistics on the entering class to the federal government,” said John Schwenkler, who taught philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s from 2010 to 2013. “This way it would look like they had retained a large percentage of students.”Newman, who came to Mount St. Mary’s from the private equity world, declined to be interviewed for this story and has since apologized for his comments. The controversy deepened earlier this month, when Newman demoted the university provost, who had been critical of the retention plan, and fired two professors, one of them tenured. The professors were la...