St. Mary's while her own school was being built. For a while, she lived in the same log cabin that had been built for Father DuBois. In June 1809, Mother Seton established Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School for girls, the first free Catholic parochial school in the United States. This school is considered to be the foundation of the entire Catholic parochial school system in the United States. Mother Seton wrote classroom textbooks and trained her Catholic sisters to become teachers, and accepted all students regardless of ability to pay. Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School developed into Saint Joseph College High School (1890–1946), Saint Joseph's High School (1946–1982), and Saint Joseph College (1902–1973), a four-year liberal arts college for women. There was a long shared history between Saint Joseph and Mount St. Mary's. In 1815, Mother Seton sent several of the Sisters of Charity to manage the Infirmary at Mount St. Mary's. As enrollment at Saint Joseph's Academy grew in the 1800s, some professors from Mount St. Mary's were added to the Saint Joseph's faculty. And, since the campuses of the all-female Saint Joseph College and the all-male Mount St. Mary's were just a couple of miles apart, the schools historically depended on each other for social life. In 1967, female students at Saint Joseph College began taking some classes at Mount St. Mary's, and men from Mount St. Mary's began taking some classes at Saint Joseph. In 1973, with declining enrollment numbers and rising operating costs, Saint Joseph College closed its doors and merged with Mount St. Mary's, which has been fully co-educational since then. World War II During World War II, Mount Saint Mary's College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. 2016 "Drown the bunnies" controversy In January 2016, The Washington Post reported on plans by university president Simon P. Newman to use a questionnaire administered to freshman students to dismiss 20 to 25 freshmen in the first weeks of school to improve the school's retention statistics. The questionnaire included questions about students' mental health, disabilities, and financial support. The story originally appeared in the university's student newspaper, The Mountain Echo. Newman was quoted as saying, in response to criticism and questions from colleagues, "...you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t.