Image is everything: Outfits win two students a pass to chat with Jay Leno

Over the summer, two University students showed thousands of television viewers across the country what exactly a Princeton education can teach you.

Mary Evans '00 and Kathleen Boon '01 appeared as featured audience members on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," which is filmed in Los Angeles.

Boon said that while they waited in line before the show, one of Leno's staff members approached them and asked if they wanted to be in an audience-participation segment.

Evans and Boon — who had dressed in matching tiger-striped dresses — were excited to take part in the show, but they were surprised when Leno actually spoke to them.

During his monologue, Leno asked Evans and Boon to stand up and asked them several questions, such as where were they from and why they were dressed in the matching garb.

"[Evans] really wanted to be on TV, so we picked out the clothing because maybe you would be able to pick us out [of the audience] more easily," Boon said yesterday. "But we didn't think we would actually get interviewed."

Later, during a segment featuring the Taco Bell dog, which had recently been removed from advertisements for the restaurant chain, Leno again solicited comments from Boon and Evans.

Boon explained that the dog was given a choice to eat either chicken strips or a taco. Leno asked the Princetonians which fast-food item they believed would be devoured first.

Having already impressed the audience with their matching clothes, Boon and Evans — both chemical engineering majors — showed why they have spent all those hours in the E-Quad.

"We said the chicken strips," Boon said. "And it ate those first."

Though they weren't given any prizes for their knowlege of the taco world, Boon said that she went home after the show and recorded the broadcast that night.

"We got a lot of comments from students who saw us after I got back on campus," Boon said. "There was no one who actually saw me, and called me immediately. But I've heard a lot of things from people at Cap since I've been back."