Dear Willard Faculty,

The Shared Governance Task Force has rescheduled its weekly Monday 4pm meetings. Meetings scheduled for even numbered days will be moved to the next even numbered Thursday. Meetings scheduled for odd numbered Mondays will be moved to the immediate prior even Thursday.

Questions about the policy may be directed to my administrative assistant, whose landline number can be located in the print edition of the upcoming “Willard College Directory.”

Sincerely,

Provost Brouxet

Dear President Cotton, Regarding your last letter, I decline your kind request that I resign my position as Vice Interim Provost of Willard College. Since the sudden departure of Provost Gauleiter, and the scandal that accompanied the related and very public impending divorce from your future ex-wife, Cheryl Tina Faye Cotton, the Board of Trustees, in their great wisdom, appointed me to this position. It is clear from my contract that I answer to the Board and not to you. My primary charge is to clarify Cheryl Tina Faye Cotton’s precise relationship to the financial health of this institution, specifically to the question of unaccounted and/or missing funds, a damaged college vehicle, and a rather serious case of arson.

At the same time, as chief academic officer on the campus, I’ve been charged to reverse a systematic ‘mollycoddling’ of faculty and staff that has been a hallmark of your last year as president. See last summer’s so-called retreat and the more recent parking policy. Details of the new order will be forthcoming.

Sincerely,

Vice Interim Provost, Lionel Brouxet (pronounced Brouchettes)

Please remember that if you have a parking pass for Faculty and Staff Lots X, Y, or Z, you need to feed the meter every hour. The meters now take $5 and $1o bills. Lots R,S, and T are being repaved but there are shuttles on the Four Hour from Lots AA, BB, and CC. You will need an updated parking pass to access those lots. Finally, President Cotton has been re-elected as Chairman of the Parking Appeals Board.

After a busy July planning, hiring, repurposing, and rescheduling, Willard College proudly announces the inauguration of the Bachelor in Language Management! As the classic liberal arts programs have proven themselves to be increasingly irrelevant, and even hated in some quarters, Willard College decisively moved forward to create a new major that responds to the vital needs of government and private entities. Colleges, corporations, the armed forces, all levels of government, public schools, etc. are desperate to hire people trained in the art of managing the message, keeping organizations on the message, and, most importantly, being able to massage the message when circumstances change.  BLM major will be trained in the art of the bullet p0ints, the talking points, and other points.

Sincerely, Henry Cotton, President of Willard College

Dear President Cotton,

I’m pleased to hear that Willard College has signed the contract to allow CCC, Inc to be the exclusive provider of all campus chicken products. I think your students will get years of enjoyment out of our locally sourced and traditionally raised and slaughtered poultry. You seemed especially taken by our policy of never over-refrigerating the chicken. In fact, many of the most important poultry flavors come from letting the meat settle in the open air. A properly aged chicken, like fine wine, takes on the flavors of nature, the sun, the humidity, and particulate matter invisible to the human eye. As with all of our new clients, the first shipment will come with specific instructions for the safe storage and processing of our product.

Thank you for your careful attention to all of the details in this transaction. Clearly there were major hurdles to getting this contract through!

Best regards, Charles Chownes, CEO, CCC, Inc.

Exciting news from the Office of Study Abroad. Starting in 2016, Willard College students who have successfully paid for three years of tuition will be eligible to spend a semester abroad in Telfer, Australia, at our soon to be opened “Willard College in Australia” campus! Just a quick drive to the lovely beaches of northern Australia, you’ll wonder why your ancestors didn’t go to Australia instead of Baltimore! Australians speak a dialect of English that most Americans can easily understand, the television is all in English, and they even have a queen that they worship so you don’t need to worry about feeling uncomfortable. You will need an updated passport. The “Willard College in Australia” campus can accommodate all majors and programs of study thanks to an internet-rich curriculum.

Best regards, Dr. Webster Davies, Director of Office of Study Abroad

Willard College is thrilled to announce the inaugural performance of our Summer Concert Series. Bring your lawn chairs and coolers out and find a good spot early so that you don’t miss the Wyoming Metropolitan Opera perform “Cheney.” Libretto by Lynn Cheney, the opera tells the story of Richard “Dick” Cheney, from his boyhood on a Wyoming ranch to his time in combat in Vietnam to his constitutional seizure of power following the 9/11 attacks.

Do you think most camps sound pretty boring? Does canoeing and archery sound like something for babies? Do you find it hard to believe that anyone would still do woodworking in 2014?

Have you ever wanted to fire a real mortar with live ammunition? Have you ever wondered what it was like to perform an autopsy?Would you like to learn how to do intake processing for felons who have been remanded to state prisons? Do you want to learn how forest fires start and why they spread so quickly? Do you want to attend a camp with no “lights out,” no “meal times,” and no “learning to all get along?” Have ever wanted to learn how to run a real Ponzi scheme and NOT get caught? Do you think camping would be a lot more fun if it involved hunting down a human prey, who had been given a ten  minute head start? Do you want to know how to pack to survive a post-atomic apocalypse? Do you think the Geneva Conventions are just “suggested guidelines?”

If you were answering “YES” to these questions,  please consider asking your parents to enroll you immediately in Willard College Summer Kamp 2014.

Please remember to register early as spots fill up quickly.

Happy Camping, Dr. Westbrook Pegler, Director of the Willard College Summer Institutes

Namaste Willard College Faculty, Pack your bags because it is time  to head into the hills for the Willard College Annual Summer Faculty Retreat. As in past years, we will be spending the weekend in Schitz Furnaces at the Schitz Furnaces Kampground and Kountry Inn. Our hosts, Trey and Luna Schitz, have spruced things up, and we look forward to seeing the new ceiling tiles and the swimming pond minus the snapping turtles.  As many of you may know, I have experienced some profound regrowth following my recent and very public split with  Cheryl Tina Faye. This year’s retreat, hosted by Namaste, Inc., reflects the spiritual work that I have performed in the past month. With that in mind, don’t forget your yoga mats and pillows, your healing teas, and vitamin supplements! Forget the Trust Falls, Cocktail Hours, and Assessment Protocol Workshops from last year. Plan on many hours of silent contemplation as we are led through the Eight Stages of Living Death by my life coach, Sri Bodhi Namaste.

Namaste, Henry “Bodhi” Cotton

[The following is Dr. Cotton’s 2014 Commencement Address. The speech, which is the exclusive property of Willard College and may not be reproduced without prior permission, has been redacted because of copyright and liability considerations. Questions concerning this should be directed to Trumbull Schtark, legal counsel to Willard College]

Welcome Board of Trustees, Deans, Associate Deans, Students, their Families, [                      ,                 ], Faculty, Staff, and Security Personnel, and [                        ]. And thanks to everyone who made the Triumph of the Will Commencement exercises such an exciting way to end the academic year. Have all the bonfires been put out?

Willard College has always been about more than an education in the traditional books and papers sense of the word. Your four to seven years here have been about relationships. From the moment you had to learn the names of the three bunk mates, plus the additional 10-14 room-mates so you could develop a rotation system for using the bathroom, you have been building and nurturing relationships. But relationships sometimes end, so I hope one that ends for you will not be the one with Willard College

But speaking of relationships ending, this seems like an apt moment to announce that Cheryl Tina Faye Cotton, my wife of six years, has filed papers to divorce me. It is not of small consequence that her legal request coincides with the move of Provost Gauleiter to Sylvester University, as the now-former provost had been my wife’s lover for the past five years. This according to Professor [                                 ] and the [                                                       ]. I wish both of them the best in the future life together.  [                                  ]

This morning, you emptied your dorm room, and perhaps after you had packed up the car or minivan, you went back to take one last look at the room that holds all those memories. I know how you feel. When I got back from a fundraising trip to [                    ] last night, I opened the door to an empty house. Other than the divorce papers, a mattress, a kitty litter box, [             ]and six garbage bags filled with my clothes, the house is empty. This morning, I realized that even the window treatments are gone! Life will throw you curve balls.

Attending Willard College came with a financial commitment, one that you are now about to start paying for. At last estimate, [      ]% of Willard’s graduating class owe the equivalent of what they will earn in [                ] year[ ], assuming they can find [                  ]. I feel it. During the last four years, Cheryl Tina Faye had steadily moved [    ]% of our savings and assets into off-shore accounts in her name, thanks in part to a class project sponsored by Professor [                    ] of the Department of Economics right here at Willard College! Kudos, by the way, to following students who worked on the project: [                        ,      ,   ,                                                                                                                                                          ].

The oldest joke in the commencement circuit is “get ready to move back to Mom and Dad’s basements, assuming they still own a house, haven’t gotten divorced, or aren’t renting out all of the rooms.” I am with you. I’ve got to be out of Cheryl Tina Fay and Provost Gauleiter’s house by tomorrow morning at Noon. Back to taping “Stay away from my cheese sticks.” It is all good.

My advice, after decades of work in higher education? Tape your name to your cheese sticks, check your bank statements every week, and watch your back. Now go out there Class of 2014 and be the change you want to be!