Nassau Hall will announce today that Stephen Oxman '67 has been chosen by the Board of Trustees as the new chair of their executive committee, making him the senior most member of the University's governing body other than the president.
Oxman, a trustee since 2002, replaces Robert Rawson '66, who will step down July 1 after 13 years as chairman and 20 years on the board.
"I'm very pleased to take on this role," Oxman said in an interview. "I think Bob has done a magnificent job ... I feel like I have very large shoes to fill."
Oxman, whose history of service to the University extends back to the campaign he led against the Bicker eating club system during his term as president of the undergraduate student body in 1966, has gained the confidence of President Tilghman and the board, according to interviews with Tilghman, trustees and others.
The 40-member Board of Trustees is responsible for the overall direction of the University. The members have review and approval powers for all major policies and they must approve the University's operating and capital budgets. As chair of the executive committee, Oxman will lead a small group of senior trustees who work with the administration.
Unlike some peer institutions, Princeton does not have a chair of the board. As president, Tilghman presides over board meetings and sets the agenda jointly with the chair of the executive committee.
Oxman, whose three children graduated from Princeton, is by any measure an academic heavyweight who brings a broad range of experience to the post.
He received the Pyne Prize, the University's top academic honor, as a senior, before going on to Yale Law School, where he edited the Yale Law Journal. After receiving his J.D., he won a Rhodes scholarship and earned a doctorate at Oxford.
A senior adviser at Morgan Stanley, Oxman has spent most of his career in law, banking and investments. He also served as assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs during the administration of President Clinton, a Yale and Oxford classmate and friend. Oxman also worked at the State Department during the Carter administration.
As a trustee, he chaired a special committee responsible for reviewing the structure of the board. During the Tilghman administration, Oxman has been a member of the Robertson Foundation Board during a particularly contentious time at the Wilson School, for which the foundation was established. The descendents of original donors Charles '26 and Marie Robertson are suing the University for alleged misuse of the endowment.
Oxman is also a member of the Wilson School's advisory council, a group that meets intermittently to advise the school's dean, and he has previously served as the alumni representative on the Council of the Princeton University Community.
Oxman's work in those capacities earned him the confidence of the president and trustees, according to those interviewed.
"He was put into positions that tested very quickly his style and his judgment," said Tom Wright, who served as secretary of the University and Nassau Hall's liaison to the trustees until 2004, referring to Oxman's service on the Robertson board and the special trustees review committee.
"He has been in the center of the effort to work through the mess of the Robertson Foundation," Wright said. "Each time he would stand up in the board meeting and report on that, you could see that the rest of the board was just gaining a tremendous sense of confidence [in him]."
Tilghman and Oxman "have come to a very high level of mutual respect and trust," Wright added, a sentiment that was echoed by others. "He would dig into the details of issues at the University, whether it was construction contracts ... or whether it was Woodrow Wilson School issues or it was student life issues, he has immersed himself in a way that is truly remarkable."
Peter Wendell '72, who also serves on the Robertson board and will become clerk of the trustees, said, "I think President Tilghman had a strong sense of Steve from our work together on Robertson."
Wright noted, however, that even though Tilghman and Oxman are close, the president has a much closer relationship with Rawson.
Both Tilghman and Rawson served on the University's presidential search committee before she stepped down when it was made clear that she was one of the candidates for the job.
"You can't imagine anything more affirming," Wright said of the committee's — and Rawson's — choice of Tilghman. "On the other hand, it's clear ... that Oxman and she really have a very deep level of trust. He has a tremendously strong sort of confidence in his leadership and she has a very strong sort of trust in his judgment."
Similarities — and differences
While those interviewed acknowledged some differences between Oxman and his predecessor, they stressed the similarities between the two.
"It's a mistake to think that there's a shift or change between [Oxman] and Rawson," Wright said. "[T]here've only been three chairs of the executive committee in 35 years. Normally you see a generational shift, and you would expect a generational shift," he added, noting that Oxman and Rawson graduated from Princeton within a year of each other.
The two are good friends, Wright said, and have similar approaches to their work. "They're very much people who tend to instill reassuring confidence by their kind of analytical clarity of exposition. There's a kind of similar gravitas to the two of them."
Paul Wythes '55, a former vice chair of the board, agreed. "I think they're both very thoughtful," he said. " They're good listeners. They don't just jump at something before listening to different sides of the issue."
In 2000, Wythes chaired the committee that authored a report calling for a 500-student increase in the size of the undergraduate population and the construction of a sixth residential college. That college — Whitman College — will inaugurate a new era in student life at Princeton, a milestone about which Oxman said he is particularly enthusiastic.
"I think it's a very creative approach, and we'll be moving forward with it in a very open-minded way and hope that it can be structured in a way that's constructive for all concerned," Oxman said.
He declined to discuss further details about his plans as chair, saying doing so would be "premature."
Oxman's approach to the four-year colleges has won praise from Tilghman, who said in an email that she and Oxman are "very much in agreement" on the plan's merit.
With Whitman slated to open in the fall of 2007, class expansion beginning with next year's freshmen class and the Robertson suit still unresolved, Oxman is leading the trustees at a time of tremendous change.
Though he was chosen over younger candidates and will not likely hold the position of chair for as long as Rawson did, Oxman strong background will be helpful during this period at the University, Wright said. "Somebody with diplomatic, investment and legal skills is not a bad mix. He goes the extra mile."
Moreover, unlike Rawson, who headed the Cleveland office of a major law firm, Oxman lives in nearby Short Hills and is semi-retired. His proximity to campus and extra time "makes a real difference," Wright said.
Wythes agreed that the location and availability are a "plus for Princeton."
"You don't want to be too close, but to have someone close enough — that's definitely a plus," he said. "He'll be there when he needs to be."
In an email, Tilghman clarified her own reasons for choosing Oxman.
"Mr. Oxman was chosen for many reasons, but primarily because of his very good judgment, his ability to listen and represent the views of his colleagues on the board, and his effectiveness as a trustee," she said. "It had nothing to do with [his] availability, at least in my own mind."
Wendell joined the majority, saying. "If you have a very bright capable person who's an excellent listener, a good facilitator among other trustees, who has good availability and bandwidth and has the confidence of the president, you know, [it] sounds like a good arrangement."
Opposition to Bicker
As an undergraduate in the 1960s, Oxman made a name for himself by campaigning for an alternative to the eating clubs' then-universal bicker system.
When elected president of the Undergraduate Governing Council (UGC) — the predecessor to today's USG — Oxman formed the "Bicker Study Committee" to examine alternative methods of admitting sophomores to the Prospect Avenue clubs.
A Mudd Manuscript Library document on the history of the eating clubs described the committee's work and its aftermath as an "uprising" against Bicker.
The UGC committee's report, titled "Report on Bicker and Proposals for Change" and subsequently dubbed the "Oxman proposal," called for assignment of students to clubs based on student preferences, with students' names prioritized randomly — a system for all purposes identical to the sign-in system employed by some clubs today.
The committee's report concluded that Bicker is a process that is "not only harmful per se, but unnecessary for the continued functioning of clubs as social institutions," as quoted in The Daily Princetonian on Nov. 16, 1966.
The report said that Bicker — decried as "virtually compulsory" because of a lack of social alternatives — imposed "a false hierarchy on Princeton social life" and erected "artificial barriers among its students," according to an account in Alexander Leitch's history of Princeton.
The 'Prince' article notes the Oxman proposal "would replace the process with the assignment of small groups or individual sophomores to clubs after each group or individual had listed three club preferences."
"After random ordering of priority of groups, each would be assigned to one of its preferred clubs as long as space remained," the article said.
Quoted in the Nov. 22, 1966 'Prince,' Oxman called Bicker "a hoax, for it deludes the sophomore into believing that a group can select one's friends rather than the person himself."
But the trustees interviewed this week said Oxman's opposition to Bicker as an undergraduate was not considered by them when evaluating him for the chair's position.
"The environment he was reacting to was the same environment when I was there, where everyone was forced to Bicker," Wendell said. "There are now a fair amount of alternatives and they're going to be even more. I think this wasn't on anyone's radar screen."
Wythes, who graduated a decade before Oxman, was unaware that Oxman had been the force behind a sign-in system. "When you told me that he was involved in the idea of sign-ins, [that was the] first time I ever heard that," he said.
Oxman's plan, which was covered by The New York Times, faced stiff opposition from several eating clubs, including Cap and Gown, his own club, which voted 53-8 against adopting it.
A 'Prince' poll conducted at the time showed that only a third of the sophomore, junior and senior classes supported his proposal — even though a majority of sophomores and seniors said they disapproved of universal Bicker.
Over the years, however, Bicker would change, as support for it among students dropped.
In 1967, 14 students resigned from Ivy Club in protest of Bicker, and the bicker rate dropped from over 90 percent to the mid-30s over the next six years, according to the Mudd library account.
By 1978, 13 of the 20 clubs in existence then had adopted some parts of Oxman's proposal, according to Leitch, and the current sign-in system was subsequently established in 1983.
The 'Prince's' most recent poll on Bicker, which phrased the question differently than the 1966 poll, found that 30 percent of the student body thought Bicker was a "good" or "very good" system and 38 percent thought it was a "bad" or "very bad" system, while 30 percent had no opinion. The poll was released Nov. 10, 2003.
In an interview this week, Oxman emphasized that today's club system is much more diverse than the one he knew as a student in the 1960s.
"A variety of alternatives are much more available now than they were then," he said. "The relationship between the clubs and the University is a much more complementary one now ... I view it as what I'd call the constructive development of various alternatives."
Coming and going
Other departures from the board include former vice chair and clerk Wythes, who steps down after serving 14 years. Also retiring are Elizabeth Duffy '88, William Ford Jr., '79, Wesley Harris GS '68, P.J. Kim '01, Richard Krugman '63 and Robert Murley '72.
Eight new trustees have also been named, including former USG president Matt Margolin '04, who was elected as a young alumni trustee.
Among the other newcomers, the charter trustees, who will serve 10-year terms, are: Thomas Barron '74, an author and private investor from Colorado; Randall Kennedy '77, a professor at Harvard Law School; and Nancy Peretsman '76, executive vice president of Allen & Company, an investment banking firm.
Term and alumni trustees, who will serve four-year terms, are: Y.S. Chi '83, vice-chair of the scientific publishing company Elsevier; Katherine Marshall GS '69, a director at the World Bank; Kimberly Ritrievi '80, former director of research at Goldman Sachs.
All trustees hold the same voting powers.
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