If Shirley Tilghman were in your introductory French class, you would most likely notice. But when Tom Wright '62 took Spanish 101 last fall, instructor Alberto Galindo had no idea he was teaching the University's vice president and secretary.
"Someone had told me he worked in the president's office, but no one told me that he was the vice president," said Galindo, who learned of Wright's position only after he searched online late in the semester.
Wright is a behind-the-scenes guy — even he downplays his role. He described his position as one in "a group of three or four . . . who work most directly with the president and the provost."
Tilghman described it differently, calling Wright her "mentor" to whom she turned more often than anyone else in her first years as president. For Tilghman's predecessor, Harold Shapiro GS '64, Wright was central to everything accomplished during his time as president.
Though he may keep a low profile, Wright — as the point person for the board of trustees and overseer of legal affairs and campus life — has been a force for change in the University for over 32 years. Now, he has made perhaps his biggest change of all, retiring from the University as of the end of 2003 and moving to Vieques, a small island 15 miles off the coast of the island of Puerto Rico.
For Wright, reflecting on his time at the University is not an easy task; it has spanned three presidencies and seen monumental changes. Wright was the force behind the creation of the general counsel's office, the construction of Frist Campus Center and most recently, the planning of the four-year residential colleges.
John Fleming GS '63, who has taught at the University for 40 years, praised Wright's diplomacy.
"He has seemed to me almost ideal," Fleming said. "I sound like I think he practically walks on water, and I somewhat do."
Walking through Wright's home is like walking through a Princeton mini-museum. A room in his Chestnut Street carriage house has framed photos of the 1958 to 1962 sprint football teams gracing its walls, and a Theatre-Intime poster hangs in his bathroom. The most recent addition to his collection is a framed sketch of what will be part of Whitman College: the Thomas H. Wright Cloister, given by the trustees.
Judging by his memorabilia, Wright appears a Princeton die-hard, and perhaps he is. He praises the trustees, the presidents and the students emphatically. They praise him equally for his dedication and sensitivity to the opinions of others.
So it might come as a surprise to learn Wright did not graduate the University with entirely positive feelings. In fact, his return to the University was what he called a "total shocking surprise."
A native of North Carolina, Wright went to Massachusetts to attend boarding school at Groton and then came to the University in 1958. Social chair of Ivy Club, Wright enjoyed the parties at the club and academically excelled, he said. However, much of his time at the University was not positive. He said he wished Princeton had a less homogeneous student body and disliked that the school was single-sex.
"I had very mixed feelings when I was an undergraduate," he said. "I had some very positive experiences, academically and socially . . . but I was pretty unhappy a lot of the time."
But he certainly did not have a mission to change the University.
"If you had asked me five years after I graduated if I thought I might work for Princeton someday, I would have laughed out loud," Wright said. "It was an unthinkable idea."
Yet his vision of change is perhaps his most praised quality.
"We both shared the idea that you can't be bound too tightly to your past," Shapiro said. "What is really . . . exciting is not what we were in the past but what we might become."
Tilghman called this quality one of "tough love."
"He is devoted to this University but not besotted by it," she said. "He can see where it works and where it needs to improve."
After graduating from the University in 1962, Wright headed to Cambridge University on a Keasbey scholarship. There, he began his legal studies before returning to the United States where he entered Harvard Law School. He worked in Washington, D.C., at the large law firm of Covington and Burling and then as assistant general counsel at the Ford Foundation.
Wright recalled that one day his secretary told him that someone claiming to be the president of Princeton was waiting to see him.
"I sort of thought he was an imposter at first. He looked so young, and I thought President Goheen was still the president," Wright said of William Bowen '58, who served as University president from 1972 to 1988.
After convincing Wright that he was in fact the University president, Bowen offered Wright the newly created position of general counsel. Wright accepted the job, thinking he would spend only three to five years at the University and add the impressive title of general counsel to his resume. Wright has been at the University ever since.
Bowen said he created the University counsel position because he did not believe external law firms could truly understand the University. Harvard and Princeton were the first to use in-house counsel, and other schools soon followed.
"Because I was the first in-house lawyer at Princeton, I had the opportunity to set the tone and to create the working relationships between the in-house legal office and the rest of the University," Wright said.
The job Wright first took barely resembles his current position. After two years as general counsel, he became secretary of the Board of the Trustees as well. Under Shapiro's presidency, his job grew again to include campus life administration. More recently, Wright has spent much of his time on the longterm direction of the University.
Under Tilghman, his job has covered four areas: the Board of Trustees, campus life, general counsel and chief of staff in the president's office. Upon Wright's retirement, the University has promoted Robert Durkee '69 to serve as secretary of the Board of Trustees. The vice president for campus life, Janet Dickerson, will report directly to Tilghman, as will General Counsel Peter McDonough.
Robert Rawson '66, chair of the Board of Trustees, looks forward to working with Durkee but will miss Wright, he said.
"There's only one Tom Wright," he said.
Wright spoke with particular pride of his work chairing the committee on Frist Campus Center. The committee wanted Frist to be a public space where everyone could feel comfortable. Despite Frist's popularity today, Wright said many students initially resisted it.
"An awful lot of people think Princeton's perfect, and they don't want anything to be done significantly differently, and so there was foot-dragging . . . for many many years," he said.
Wright's committee sought to make Frist a place of both old and new — one in which the history of the University would be present alongside modern features. The building itself captures this spirit, its front the former Palmer Physics Laboratory built in 1907 and its rear a four-story glass wall.
P.J. Kim '01, former USG president and current trustee, said Wright helped him improve the University's fitness facilities. As a sophomore class senator, Kim barged into Wright's office one day demanding a better gym. Rather than get angry, Wright suggested Kim write up a proposal to purchase more equipment.
"The end result of that was the whole Stephens Fitness Center," Kim said. "He really made that possible. It happened in about a year and a half."
Since then, Wright has worked extensively on the planned 500-student increase and the development of the new four-year college system.
"Princeton offers without any doubt the best academic program for undergraduates in the world. I don't have any doubt about that. But our social life and residential life has been less successful for many students," said Wright, who considers retiring before the project is finished one of his biggest regrets.
"The structure of the life doesn't give them the outlet, the opportunities, the setting in which they can enjoy themselves fully and take full advantage of being with each other," he said.
Wright has other regrets. He wishes he had worked more on the student discipline systems, including the Honor Code, and on the relationship between the eating clubs and the University.
In addition, Wright considers it unfortunate that the Robertson family brought a lawsuit against the University. The family endowed the foundation that pays for most of the Wilson School.
The Robertsons claim the University has taken control of the foundation's $550 million endowment, using the money for purposes unrelated to training students for government work.
"I believe that lawsuit is without merit, but it is costly in time, resources and energy," Wright said.
Wright, who has also been secretary and treasurer of the Robertson Foundation since 1976, has been in the middle of the conflict during the last two years.
Though he has been an important adviser to University presidents, Wright said he never wanted to be president himself.
"[Being president] is a truly absorbing responsibility, and I didn't feel that I was able to make that kind of commitment, even if someone wanted me to — which was far from certain that anyone ever would," Wright said.
Bowen said it did not surprise him Wright never left the University to serve as president at another school.
"There's no place he would have gone. He's too committed to Princeton," Bowen said. "No, if he had left it would've been to do something really different."
Now, Wright has decided to do something very different. He has moved to Vieques, an extremely undeveloped island that was used by the U.S. Navy as a bombing range. The navy left in May, opening the island up for more residents.
The Spanish classes Wright took at the University, 101 and 102, as well as the private training with a graduate student, were in preparation for his move.
He built a house on Vieques, which was featured in The New York Times in May. Holding up the article, he jokes, "I was briefly famous." The house looks out onto the ocean and has two bedrooms for his two adult children and a large dormitory room for his six grandchildren.
As far away from Princeton as Wright is in Vieques, he has already met people connected with the University. The current governor of Puerto Rico is a parent of a Princeton alumna, and a candidate for governor next fall is a friend and an alumnus.
Wright said he hopes to write, read and be involved in the development of the island. He will spend 10 months of the year there.
Bowen said he doubts Wright's move means he will leave the University for good.
"He will also find ways to stay in touch," Bowen said. "I don't see him just disappearing into the seas of Puerto Rico."
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