This is the first installment in a five-part series. Every night through Thursday, we’ll bring you a new candidate to be Kenyon’s next president. On Friday morning, we’ll open a poll so you can vote for your favorite. The Thrill will then convey the results of that poll to the Presidential Search Committee, which will hold a public meeting on Friday evening.

It’s a presidential year, that’s for sure. While everyone is talking about Romney-Ryan vs. Obama-Biden, there is another presidential race a little closer to Gambier: the race for Kenyon College’s next president. When President S. Georgia Nugent steps down, there will be a void in the Kenyon Community, and I’ll be the first to suggest that void would best be filled by the cheesy goodness of Papa John’s Founder, Spokesman, CEO and Head Chef (that’s speculation, but I’ve seen him flip his share of pizzas in commercials), John Schnatter.

And really, Schnatter is already a Kenyonite, judging by how much time his uninsured delivery minions spend schlepping pizzas around here. (More time than the Nuge, at any rate.) In the immortal words of our very own SJW: “Hello, Papa? It’s me, Sydney.”

There are a lot of ways Kenyon could benefit from the leadership of a man like Schnatter. He knows how to wheel and deal and turn out a fine and uniform product in the pizza world, and if Herman Cain has taught me anything, pizza-nomics always translate to people-nomics. It might be problematic for Grill business, the treadmills and elliptical machines at the KAC may break down a little faster than anticipated, and we would probably have to be patient with Schnatter referring to classes as “toppings” and majors as “special deals,” but the cheese would be flowing down the Hill like the Kokosing in the springtime. After all, it’s all about the cheese, isn’t it?