NYT: How to Get to Princeton?

Here is a very intersting article about my alma mater, and I must say I have to agree - do not use its name in vain, especially for profit. Why not register it as a trademark? Like Billy Joel® And while we're at it, the same goes for the images. Below is the dormitory of the Graduate school where the room 34 still reeks of my thoughts...



By PATRICK McGEEHAN

For its first 150 years, Princeton University was called the College of New Jersey. Then it adopted the name of its hometown. Now it wants to stop others from freely using the Princeton name. The latest interloper is Merrill Lynch & Company, the nation's biggest brokerage firm. Merrill said this week that it intended to put the Princeton name on its mutual funds to gain wider acceptance among investors.

But the university's lawyers demanded that Merrill Lynch reconsider, arguing that the company was trying to trade on the school's image as a bastion of higher education, one with a well-managed $12 billion endowment. "It now appears that Merrill is planning to exploit the university's name and reputation for its commercial gain," a spokeswoman for the university, Cass Cliatt, said yesterday. "We don't want Princeton to be associated with the performance of Merrill's funds." Merrill Lynch is the latest in a long list of companies that have tried to cash in on the cachet of the Princeton name. There are Princeton Ski Shops, Princeton Driving School, even the Princeton Review college-preparation business, none of which have a connection to the university.

Despite the proliferation, the university has not been shy about trying to safeguard its name, Ms. Cliatt said. Its lawyers have succeeded in stamping out some uses of the name, she said, and have reached an easing of tensions with others, including the Princeton Review. The problem for the school dates to 1896, when it took on the name of its town, something no other Ivy League school has done. Since then, the fortunes of the two have become intertwined, but when the university tries to beat back any incursions, it fights alone. "I wish I had a dollar for every company or corporation or homeowner that used our address," said Phyllis L. Marchand, the mayor of Princeton Township. "They're all Princeton wannabes. It's flattering, but I wish we got some benefit from it."


Princeton officials were more flabbergasted than flattered when Merrill Lynch announced on Monday that it planned to take its own name off its money-management operation and rename the business Princeton Portfolio Research and Management. In a statement released from its corporate headquarters in Manhattan, Merrill Lynch said that the new name draws not on the school's reputation but on the history of the operation, "which has long been based in the Princeton, N.J., area." But, as Ms. Cliatt pointed out with a tone of disdain, none of that history transpired in Princeton itself. "Actually, they're not in Princeton," she said. "They're in Plainsboro." Indeed, Merrill is the biggest employer and taxpayer in Plainsboro, a fast-developing town in Middlesex County that clings to Princeton, in Mercer County, from across busy Route 1.

Plainsboro's longtime mayor, Peter A. Cantu, said his town, like others close by, is filled with businesses that claim a dubious connection to their more prestigious neighbor. "All the communities surrounding Princeton get a little irritated with that, but it is what it is," Mr. Cantu said. Princeton University officials are more concerned about the name than the place, Ms. Cliatt said. She pointed to a quotation from a senior Merrill Lynch executive as evidence that the company had the university, not the town, in mind when choosing the name. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal quoted Robert Doll, who oversees Merrill Lynch's mutual funds, explaining the choice by saying that, "Princeton has positive connotations, given the prestige of the university."

Yesterday, Merrill Lynch backed away from that remark, saying in another statement that "we regret having made any comments that might prompt management of Princeton University to think we will be using their name and reputation to support our new brand." Still, Hugh C. Hansen, a professor at Fordham University School of Law, said he thought "the choice of a name is problematical" for Merrill Lynch. He said that the value of the Princeton name derives from the university's presence. "Given the fact that they're not in Princeton," he said of Merrill, "it sounds like they're free-riding."