The prof should not have quit. He should have flunked every pseudo-student who blew off his test. He let them win.
I don’t quite understand his decision to resign his position. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1977 at Texas A & M, so he is about 60...maybe he is in a position to take early retirement, or else believes he can find a comparable position somewhere else.
I surmise that he was ordered to cancel the exam by the school, and added his resignation because the “powers that be” had capitulated on his behalf.
I have no direct evidence of this, but the sequence carries all of the hallmarks of such garbage.