Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch will be the senior “Class Day” speaker at Princeton in June, and several students have made their displeasure with their school’s selection known, writing an op-ed for the Daily Princetonian questioning the decision to have Lynch speak at the event.
The “Class Day” event takes place several days before graduation, and the NFL star will not be speaking at the actual commencement ceremony. Nevertheless, some students are upset they didn’t get a chance to weigh in on whether Lynch should speak. “As seniors, we had been looking forward to the speaker announcement for months,” the op-ed reads. “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.”
The Ivy League students also added that their frustration with Lynch stems not from his lack of credentials, but with his history of being combative with the media. “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,” they wrote. “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.”
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