In a press conference that has stunned students and wowed the scientific community, Stanford Provost Persis Drell confirmed this weekend that school president Marc Tessier-Lavigne is kept preserved in a cryogenic vat between speeches, only emerging from his ungodly slumber for intermittent public appearances.
“It’s basically a Winter Soldier-type deal,” Drell explained.
“We unfreeze Marc, give him the speech, have him deliver it, and freeze him back up until the next time.” Faculty members, all of whom seemed aware and supportive of this practice, pointed out various benefits, such as having a university figurehead who can mindlessly parrot whatever alumni and the Board of Trustees want, and getting to chill “cold brewskis” in the vat when Tessier-Lavigne was awake.
When asked how long this strategy has been in place, Drell was evasive.
“I’m not at liberty to give out too many details,” she said.
“Suffice it to say that if it had been for a while (which I’m not saying it has been) then we would never need to find a new president for Stanford—we’d just have to wait an average term length, give the president plastic surgery and a new name, and then let him keep furthering the same institutional interests as always.”
“I’m not saying that we do something like that,” Drell added. “I’m just saying we could if we wanted to.”
This revelation has unsurprisingly given rise to a rumor mill centering around the so-called “Marc Tessier-Lavigne,” with conspiracy theories circulating that the current president is anybody from former president John Hennessy to school founder Leland Stanford to Jesus Christ Himself. At press time, a noticeably freezer-burnt MTL would neither confirm nor deny any of the rumors.
