Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Stanford’s current president, has announced that he will be opening an exploratory committee in what likely precedes a formal U.S. presidential campaign announcement. Tessier-Lavigne released his statement to service4all in an event that triggered many students to “reply all” and ask to be unsubscribed.
Finally putting weeks of rumor to rest, Tessier-Lavigne aims to successfully compete among a large crowd of presidential hopefuls. Although he declared he would not be seeking the nomination of any political party, Tessier-Lavigne stressed in a Notes from the Quad that he hopes to “bridge Americans large and wide to form a non-partisan platform that champions everyone.”
When pushed for further comment and policy specifics, the President noted to the press to keep an eye out for his next long-range planning, but “this time for the country.” Tessier-Lavigne did tease that he would expand his experience with the ResX taskforce to deal with the different needs of states across America.
“States are just like neighborhoods, but bigger,” he said to a crowd of Stanford in Government students at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Tessier-Lavigne then stressed his experience in negotiating with different parties with conflicting motives.
Tessier-Lavigne enters the race with natural skills, eager support and some big challenges. His campaign website, for example, has been plagued with bugs — not caterpillars, thankfully — that have crashed the site multiple times since launch day. Stanford WiFi and Eduroam currently cannot support his website due to a large number of gifs.
On the bright side, polling shows that the President’s “daddy” appeal proves a significant asset in early campaign swing states.
In a tweet storm, President Donald Trump wrote, “Daddy Marc isn’t even eligible to run for president! Wasn’t he born in Canada?!” The Stanford College Republicans have yet to comment.
Critics, however, point to a part of Tessier’s speech that sounds familiar to one given before.
“Let us be inspired by the issues of our time. Let them lead us to the insights we need to chart a course for our future. Let us commit to being a purposeful country, a courageous country, a country of unlimited potential,” Tessier-Lavigne said. He added, “Let us be fearless.”
The Office of Community Standards responded in a statement saying, “While the President borrowed some — maybe most — of the words from his inaugural address, he did cite himself, so he didn’t technically plagiarize himself.”
While some campaign staffers were worried this would haunt him, fundraising currently shows otherwise. Raising over $26.5 billion dollars, roughly equivalent to Stanford’s endowment, the presidential candidate is poised to pull the largest amount of funds 24 hours after announcing his presidential bid.
Contact Richard Coca at richcoca ‘at’ stanford.edu.
Editor’s note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.