Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch has been chosen as Princeton’s Class Day speaker to address graduating seniors at an event the day before Commencement, and not every student is happy about that.
A group of students wrote a letter protesting Lynch as not up to par with the kind of speakers the senior class at Princeton was expecting.
“As seniors, we had been looking forward to the speaker announcement for months,” the letter said, via USA Today. “Many of us were disappointed when we saw that this year’s speaker was to be Marshawn Lynch, mainly because we did not feel included in the process by which this speaker was nominated and finally selected.”
Students seemed confused about why a player who was better known for refusing to speak was chosen as their speaker.
“Among articles that praised his NFL career and philanthropic contributions, we came across articles discussing Lynch’s reticence with the media and his terse responses at press conferences. In 2013 and 2014, for example, Lynch was fined $50,000 and $100,000 for refusing to speak to the media. During the 2015 Superbowl Media Day, Lynch famously responded to multiple questions with variants of ‘I’m just here so I won’t get fined.’ With no other frame of reference, such reports caused confusion over the set of criteria that led to his nomination,” the letter said.
Last year’s Princeton Class Day speaker was actress Ellie Kemper.