Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch was announced as the class speaker at Princeton last week.
The school chose the Super Bowl-winning champion, who is expected to speak several days prior to the official graduation ceremony, due to his “sustained professional excellence.”
However, seniors of the University are disappointed not only for choosing a speaker with a troubled past in the media but for their lack of say in the process.
The students took to the newspaper to write the institution a letter stating their frustrations.
“As seniors, we had been looking forward to the speaker announcement for months,” the letter read. “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.”
From there, the students proceeded to explain how after googling Lynch, they came to the conclusion that his trouble making headlines in the past didn’t really reflect positively as someone who would be chosen to speak at Princeton.
” 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,” the letter continued. “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.”
As of now, it is unclear if the University will choose to move forward with their decision.
Lynch has yet to speak out about the situation.
