Dear Humanities Faculty, My congratulations to the work recently completed by the Assessment Advisory Committee, under the firm guiding hand of Associant Dean Welzr. We are excited to announce the “Scantron Essay” assignment guidelines. While on one hand, it seems incredible that faculty still assign and grade essay assignments, it is more astonishing that until now there was no viable alternative. Our innovation really puts Willard College out in front of the pack in terms of delivering a product that has maximum assessibility and gradibility efficiencies. The concept is so simple. The assignment administrator prepares an essay and then breaks it apart sentence by sentence. Students then must select the correct sentence from a choice of five sentences. The Scantron Essay can be as short as five sentences or as long as five pages! Writing and grading writing have never been so easy.

We are confident that the Willard Scantron Essay will become the premium pre-written essay assignment in higher education.

Sincerely, President Henry Cotton

Please answer the following essay prompts. The Willard College Dean of Admissions, Dr. Leonard Primple, will use your answers to assess your application file.

1. Why do you wish to attend Willard College?
2. Tell us a little bit about your family? What sort of house did you grow up in? What was the neighborhood like? Did you vacation at the local state forest or in Paris?
3. Can you explain why a table setting would have more than two forks?
4. What kind of work do your parents do? Do you wish to follow in their footsteps? Upon graduation from college, do you anticipate working in the family business? What sort of business is it and what is its capitalization?
5. How much money do you have in your wallet right now? What do the credit limits on the credit cards in your possession reveal about who you are as a person?
6. Explain your feelings about debt? Does it make a difference if the debt is in your name or in that of a close family member?
7. What kinds of career goals do you have? Do you think the college one attends should be held responsible if you cannot obtain work in your desired field?

Dear Willard Community,

We regret to inform you that the previously contracted commencement speaker, Herbert Kutschbach, will not be available. Since agreeing to speak at our commencement, his health has deteriorated, making travel from Bolivia to the United States extremely difficult. The good news is that we will be sticking with the Triumph of the Will theme, even as we search out a new commencement speaker.

Meanwhile, I should like to remind everyone that the scheduled daily drills and rehearsals are continuing. Please block out 3pm-6pm and be dressed out and ready to go. As all faculty are required to participate, classes normally held at those hours have been cancelled for the remainder of the semester. Rehearsals and drills will also take place on Saturdays and Sundays.

By now, you have received the three 3-ring binders with the choreography, music, costumes (including costume changes), instructions for handling the torches, and for those deemed in need of trimming their weight, a diet plan. You should memorize those parts that have been highlighted in yellow; yellow highlighter indicates the portion of the plan that are specific to your part. Your costumes have already been purchased, an expense that the college will absorb until the cost (including tax, shipping and a nominal handling fee) has been deducted from your next pay check.

I don’t need to remind the Willard College faculty and staff that this program means a great deal not only to the college, but to Associate Provost for Admissions, Curtland Schickel, Provost Gauleiter, the Board of Trustees, and me.

I’ll see you out on the football field soon.

Best, President Henry Cotton

Willard College is proud to announce that we continue to follow national trends in raising the ratio of tenured faculty to students, increasing our part-time and adjunct’s contribution to work-load streams, improving the depth of our administrative and professional staff coverage, doubling expenditure per student-athlete while holding cost per student-academic steady, and moving our price point upward in a trajectory ahead of national averages. Although we did not make into the Delta Cost Project at the American Institutes for Research, due to a clerical oversight, our own research suggests that Willard College would have been a stand out institution. No doubt the report would have lauded our innovative FlexFax Teams, our Tuition Reconfiguration Package, our warm embrace of MOOCs, and many other bold steps into the 21st century.

As president of this institution, there is no greater pride I can feel than knowing that students, staff, and faculty, are ready to make the kinds of sacrifices necessary to keep Willard College at the front of the middle of the line.

Best wishes, President Henry Cotton

Faculty, Please remember that you are expected to march in the upcoming commencement ceremonies and that you must purchase your Willard College-approved apparel from the bookstore by the end of the month. It is critically important that we present a unified Willard brand to our graduating seniors and their fee-paying parents. Marching in step is all the more important this year because of our innovative commencement program.

As you know, the search for a commencement speaker who can direct the audience toward the Willard experience, hit the ten “Willard Way” themes, and reinforce our price point, is never easy. After an exhaustive search by one of the nation’s top speaker engagement firms, Spotlight Speakers and Entertainment, we have secured the services of the one the world’s greatest film-makers, Herbert Kutschbach. The last surviving member of Leni Riefenstahl’s film crew, Mr. Kutschbach will reflect on his early path-breaking work. To close the loop between his address and the graduation ceremonies, the theme of this year’s commencement will be  “Triumph of the Will at Willard College: Achieving Excellence after Graduation.” At the speaker’s recommendation, the commencement will be held at night, with each procession participant carrying a torch!

Obviously, we do not want to see any of the sorts of displays by malcontents that marred last year’s events. And to make sure the procession goes off without a hitch, there will be weekly practices, starting next week. Please keep an eye out for announcements of the schedule as it may require rescheduling class-time with seniors.

With deep gratitude,

President Henry Cotton

Willard College wishes to apologize for its earlier subject line, which has been changed to conform to the values and dreams of Willard College, its Board of Trustees, its full-tuition paying students, its faculty all along the pay scale, and its many part-time cleaning and facilities staff who had to clean up the mess about which we have by now all read about. Best, Henry Cotton

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

As always, thank you for your last letter. I agree that the incident described was horrific, indecent, and troubling, but I wish to assure you that it does not reflect the broader management of our institution.

No one was as shocked as I was when we entered  the Krafft-Ebbing Campus Museum and discovered that an installation art piece entitled “Shit on Willard” had been set up in the main exhibition hall. Of course, this ruined what had promised to be a pleasant evening of art, music, and dining for the Trustees and Administrators

You had some specific questions about the installation piece, which I ‘d like to answer. First, yes, the feces that had been deposited throughout the hall was human in origin as determined by lab tests. Second, we do not know how the material had been delivered to these locations. Third, the Museum Director, Dr. Chelmers Tucker, had not been apprised of the details of the exhibit, and may have been misled as to its true characteristics. Fourth, no one in the Art Department (which is currently being folded into Computer Game Design) has taken responsibility.

Finally, I’d like to address the artist statement which we all read with a certain degree of dismay. The document, which was taped to the floor, and was surrounded by the aforementioned substance, made a variety of charges against the institution but we find them to be baseless and without merit. I would like to especially note that Willard College students are no more in debt than the average college student.

In the short term, I ask the Trustees to have patience while we clear up but the physical mess and also begin to clarify responsibility for this hate crime against a venerable place of learning.

Sincerely, Dr. Henry Cotton, President of Willard College

It is with deep sadness that I announce the passing of distinguished Associate Provost for Athletic Affairs, Dr. Primo Juan Gomes de Farandula, M.D., PhD. Since arriving to Willard, Dr. Gomes de Farandula shepherded our athletics program from the shadow of criminal indictment to its current position. Born in Spain in 1910, Gomes de Farandula saw action during what he referred to as the “so-called Spanish Civil War.” Following the triumph of Franco, Gomes de Farandula worked in data collection and internal security before earning a medical degree. Thanks to his ground-breaking  research on the impact of electrical currents on brain function, Dr. Gomes de Farandula enjoyed a successful career at a string of state-run hospitals. Following the end of the regime that he helped to establish, Gomes de Farandula wandered the globe, with sojourns in Chile, Indonesia, and Guatemala, before finding his “home away from home” at Willard Psychiatric Hospital. One of the last remaining former hospital employees to transition to higher education, Gomes de Farandula was a tireless advocate of college athletics, which he once described as the “purest, most direct, form of the organic and corporatist perfection. In a society that degenerates before our very eyes, as corrosive and illegitimate ideas destroy our young people, it is athletes which protect that which is most exalted.” Inspired by the medieval Spanish legal doctrine of the fuero, the good doctor held that athletes, like clergy and the military, should only be accountable to themselves. Dr. Gomes de Farandula also put his medical training to good use, and was able to definitively disprove “the s0-called concussion crisis in college football.”

In his later years, Gomes de Farandula made his way around campus by golf cart, often accompanied by the many assistant coaches who he had brought on staff. Despite suffering from diabetes, dementia, progressive general paralysis, and a host of other ailments, he continued working until he drew his last breath. There are no known survivors.

With heavy heart, Dr. Henry Cotton

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Administrators,

I would also like to take a moment to explain a new policy that fits roughly into our domestic partnership/marriage policy. As you know, following passage of Marriage Equality laws here, Willard now provides equal recognition and benefits to all married couples. Willard has also maintained the policy of a fire-wall between spouses both employed here. One spouse may not supervise another spouse. If the couple is in the same department, neither may serve as chair. For a host of reasons, a person may recuse him or herself from any work that involves the other half of the couple.
But in the past several years, intra-departmental extra-marital affairs have become so pervasive that we have needed to develop policies to cover these matters. Effective next week, Willard College is the first institution of higher learning that recognizes covert romantic relationships. The policy will have no bearing on insurance coverage, health insurance, or any other benefit normally accruing to employees. My administration, however, will allow covert couples to apply for additional travel money so that an individual may travel to a conference or other professional event with their partner. Because Willard College understands that extra-marital relationships can be very stressful, especially for those who are already married, Willard will provide coverage, including a wide menu of plausible excuses, for periods when you are with your additional loved one. Human Resources will set up an account that you can access online
Willard College is also placing a ban on male or female faculty wearing sandals, or any open-toed show, with socks, or any other form of hosiery. I was recently taking prospective students around campus when we encountered a group of philosophy and physics faculty having lunch. All of them were sporting this look. Needless to say, it was difficult to explain this to the prospective students.
Finally, faculty may no longer store food of any sort in their offices. This policy builds on last year’s ban on the use of cots or hammocks in the office, and is part of a college-wide effort to de-domesticate faculty offices. The food edict is also a a result of recent vermin infestations, which may have contributed to what was feared to have been a hantavirus outbreak.
Best regards, President Henry Cotton

Dear Faculty,
As we begin to prepare for the Spring into Spring 2014 Semester, I want to thank everyone for the kind notes and letters during my recent sojourn to San Diego over break. California was lovely but rest assured, I’ve returned to my heart’s work and love, Willard College. Many of you were concerned that I might not return from the balmy world of La Jolla and Carlsbad, but there is so much yet to do to and with Willard College.

Best, President Henry Cotton

P.S. If you returned to campus only to discover that the contents of your office were no longer there, rest assured that they are in transit to your new work station!