The Ballad of Joe White
(to the tune of "Battle of New Orleans")

'Twas in Fall ought-five, and things were looking bleak,
The Governor hated us,  the state was feeling cheap,
Our FTE's were dropping, and our classes growing large,
When from the East Joe White arrived and ably took charge.

The times were tough,  our President resisted feeling grim,  
Though he had to think of something or our future looked quite dim,
Then he called his troops together and he bid them take a stand,
and he put them all to work to write a new strategic plan.

Chorus:
We wrote that plan and we put it on a web page,
A strategic plan that tells us what to do;
We wrote that plan and we put it on a web page,
And now we know exactly what it is that we must do.

We had a lot of meetings, and we wrote a lot of text,
and we shared a lot of drafts we wrote in Word and pdf,
We talked about our mission and we talked about our goals,
and we talked about our roofs because they're old and full of holes.

We had so many meetings that we cancelled every class;
our papers went unedited, our grants went in the trash;
Our students stood in hallways where they worried and they prayed,
that whatever we were doing wouldn't matter to their grades.

Chorus

And when our plan was finished,  we took it with delight,
to Kinko's for a binder that was red and blue and white;
We shared it with the Provost, we shared it with the Dean,
We shared it with the President whose goal  the thing had been.

And now our life is wonderful, our problems have been cured,
The grants are flowing freely,  the state budget is assured,
And if we have a moment's doubt, we know just what to do,
we look inside that binder that is white and red and blue.

Chorus