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Nearly shut out, Princeton awards honorary degrees to all Nobel winners

Nassau Hall Empty Chair - JPFG.jpeg
José Pablo Fernández García / The Daily Princetonian

The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional.

After last year’s record of five Nobel prizes won by individuals affiliated with Princeton, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 called an emergency meeting of the Board of Trustees over the weekend to award honorary degrees to all of this year’s non-affiliated Nobel winners.

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Seeing that none of the first five prizes announced this year went to Princetonians, University officials worried about a potential total shut out from the annual awards.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t yet figured out how to just buy these awards. So, we were kind of hoping our fossil fuel dissociation vote would win us the Peace Prize this year,” said University trustee Petra Liom ’73.

Meeting in Nassau Hall’s faculty room, the board voted on Saturday, Oct. 8, to grant honorary degrees to all of this year’s winners.

The trustees also voted to award honorary degrees to the winners of the Economics prize, who had not yet been announced at the time of the emergency trustee meeting.

“We really wanted to go for all six Nobels this year, so we went ahead and awarded a couple blank degrees. Someone can fill the names in later,” said University trustee Rez Ume Pecker ’20.

After the meeting, President Eisgruber dispatched Dean of the College Jill Dolan to hand deliver the honorary degrees to all the winners.

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As French writer Annie Ernaux was busy packing for her trip to Stockholm to receive the Literature prize, Dolan arrived unannounced at her door with a framed degree in tow and began explaining that Princeton had awarded Ernaux an honorary doctorate of letters.

Ernaux quickly interrupted Dolan, asking, “Princeton? In the U.S.? Is that like Harvard?”

José Pablo Fernández García is a senior currently procrastinating his midterms week work and senior thesis outline to write this. He is also Head Prospect Editor at the ‘Prince’ and can be reached at jpgarcia@princeton.edu.

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