U. to have 2 presidents*

Last Thursday, the presidential search committee needed a candidate. Now it needs to get rid of one.

When the presidential search committee mailed its offers of admission to its two final candidates, they did not expect that both candidates would accept the offer.

“They’re not all going to choose Princeton,” Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye told the search committee at its meeting last weekend. “My office has gotten this down to a science.”

But Rapelye was wrong, as the presidential search committee will announce today that One Nassau Hall will be cohabited by not one president but two: University Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 and former Wilson School dean Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80.

Eisgruber said he was delighted that the search committee had intentionally chosen multiple presidents.

“The University’s four-year residential college system, pioneering no-loan financial aid policy and spirit of scholarship has really made this day possible,” he said in response to a question about the yield error.

In an interview defending its decision, the search committee said that the over-enrollment would work well with the candidates’ schedules.

“Did you read Anne-Marie’s piece in The Atlantic? She loves her family. That’s why she’s our Thursday-Friday president,” search committee chair Kathryn Hall ’80 said. “And Chris? He’s a family man — I wouldn’t want him working any more than two days a week: Monday and Tuesday,” she added.

Slaughter confirmed that she was indeed a Thursday-Friday kind of president.

“As an international relations expert, I travel the world conducting research and speaking with foreign leaders,” she explained, “which is why I will be spending Monday through Wednesday of next year in the Bahamas.”

When Hall was alerted that no one was tasked with covering Wednesdays, she explained while she regretted the slipup, she was not prepared to ask Slaughter or Eisgruber to add a third day to their schedule.

“Look, we planned this. Okay?” Hall said. “Okay?”