Dear All Key Campus Stakeholders,

What I am going to tell you must remain CONFIDENTIAL.

The Board of Trustees meeting, which concluded last night, paints a perilous financial picture for Willard College. Inflated administration salaries (I disputed this until I was blue in the face), the Joe Biden Inflation Economy, sagging student enrollment, skyrocketing discount rates, and various invaluable but costly training retreats for key leadership, mean that the creditors are literally banging at the door. On this last point, I mean this literally. Representatives of a bank that issued us a loan last year have been standing outside of President Cotton’s door for the past three days. He’s living on peanuts and bottled water.

So, effective immediately, everything that can be monetized should be monetized. Toilet paper in the bathrooms. Hot water for the showers. Stitches at the Student Health Center. Faculty parking rates are going to quadruple. All department office supplies will be secured and sold at auction.

Let’s be creative. What other services do we provide for free that could be monetized!

We need to move very fast or Willard College is going to sink faster than the Titanic.

Dr. Martha Squidds, Vice President of Finance, Marketing, and Parking

Dear Colleagues on the Humanities Working Group (originally called Save Humanities),

We have hit my limit for scheduling challenges. Let’s review where we left things after the last very long and confusing chain of emails. Before I continue, let me again remind everyone to please 1) reply all when appropriate 2) reply to just the sender if it is a personal communication about private medical conditions and 3) avoid addressing issues not relevant to our work, including divorces, flirtations with members of the committee, memes, and gifs. What follows is my effort to distill dozens of very long emails into their essential and relevant information. Remember, please, that we were trying to find one hour next week to meet.

Lyle Pettigrew, English, is only available from 3-4pm on Tuesday even though he is only teaching one class. Theater Studies Professor Devun Calibran shared the following: “I am exhausted from a teaching schedule that requires me to be on campus 2 days a week. Matters are aggravated by a variety of personal issues, including shopping for a new refrigerator and needing to finally do a deep clean of my second floor closet.” Tammy Lyttle, Administration Studies, lost her keys to her office and has not been able to reach her computer to respond in a timely manner. Winston Throttle is currently in a messy divorce with his current wife (his fourth since starting a Willard two years ago). Penelope Doppelganger is teaching no classes due to low/no enrollment but is still “occupied with the work of thinking about teaching.” Johnny Talentless shared: “I have this poem rattling around in my head but I cannot get it out. So, scheduling is tough right now.”

How do we proceed?

Professor Kyle Claudeen

Dear Senior Leadership Team,

Last night’s production of Theater director Lowell Balsaque’s “Titanic: The Last Chapter” was an unmitigated disaster. We anticipate a class action lawsuit by those in attendance and the actors and penalties from the Sylvester County Code Inspectors. We may also lose our accreditation.

Briefly, Professor Balsaque envisioned an ‘experiential’ Titanic performance in which the audience would ‘feel the ship sinking into the icy Arctic waters.’ To that end, high pressure fire hoses were set up, connected to the College’s hydrant system. (You may have walked past the theater and wondered about the hoses). Based on a careful study of the Titanic’s last hours as a floating vessel, Balsaque also arranged for fires to be set.

After the iceberg collision in the performance, large fires were set on stage. At first the audience thought these were fake fires. When they came to realize that the fires were real, and the auditorium was starting to fill with smoke, panic set in. Balsaque had anticipated this and had all of the doors locked from the outside. He wanted those in attendance to ‘feel the panic that the real passengers felt.’ Then came the fire hoses which were directed at both actors and the audience to reproduce the experience of being on a sinking ship. Fortunately, the hoses also extinguished the fire but then the auditorium filled with smoke and steam.

Eventually, fire fighters from surrounding counties broke into the theater and treated audience members for smoke inhalation, panic attacks, several sprained ankles, and three cardiac incidents. Balsaque was questioned by law enforcement and then taken into custody on arson charges.

We really need to lawyer up on this one. This is bad. Unimaginably bad.

President of Willard College Dr. Henry Cotton & Provost Lying