When officials of New York University announced that Princeton University’s president, Shirley Tilghman, would deliver the main address at next month’s commencement ceremony at Washington Square Park, they might have expected their graduating seniors to applaud the invitation – or, if students were disappointed, at least to keep quiet about it.

As it turns out, NYU students failed to meet either of those expectations, much to the dismay of university officials.

Reaction on campus to the selection of Ms. Tilghman as graduation speaker has been decidedly downbeat. The day the announcement was made, the student newspaper, the Washington Square News, vented its disappointment in an editorial, titled “Graduates deserve more,” that carried the tone of someone who received socks for his birthday.

“Instead of being honored by the presence of Maya Angelou, Jon Stewart, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez …,” the editorial stated, “the class of 2005 will be receiving Shirley Tilghman, the president of Princeton University.”

It’s not that students don’t respect Ms. Tilghman, 58, an esteemed molecular geneticist who made history in 2001 in becoming Princeton’s first female president. Seniors said, however, that they are puzzled as to why the administration would tap the president of another university – one that may well have rejected many of them four years ago – to beckon them into the working world.

Far from sympathetic, NYU officials handed down a severe scolding to the student newspaper. Four days after The New York Sun inquired about the editorial, the paper published a fuming letter signed by the university president’s chief of staff, Diane Yu, and senior vice president for university relations, Lynne Brown.

“It showed poor judgment and a lack of graciousness to write as you did about someone we have invited to our campus to receive an honor,” the letter stated. “It came across as an entirely petty objection based upon some vague notion of how entertaining a commencement should be.”

Echoing those sentiments, an NYU spokesman, John Beckman, told the Sun he found the editorial to be “mortifying,” “contemptible,” “undignified,” and “petty.” Mr. Beckman said he found it “discouraging that there should be any discussion of this sort about a person of Shirley Tilghman’s stature.”

She “is a person of real achievement and character, and her scholarship and leadership exemplify the qualities to which we want our graduates to aspire,” Mr. Beckman said.

“We are honored to have her at our commencement,” he said, “as would any institution of higher learning.”

Technically, NYU doesn’t even have graduation speakers, Mr. Beckman said. By tradition, graduations feature “a Response on Behalf of the Honorary Degree Recipients.”

He pointed to other examples in the past of university presidents’ being invited to deliver commencement addresses at other campuses. Four years after he stepped down as president of Dartmouth College, James Freedman spoke at the University of Rochester in 2002. In 2001, the president of Smith College, Ruth Simmons, who was about to take the helm of Brown University, spoke at NYU’s commencement.

A spokesman for Princeton, Eric Quinones, did not reply to an inquiry about the Washington Square News’s editorial. He did note in an e-mail, “President Tilghman was honored to be asked to deliver an address at NYU’s commencement.”

Apparently, Ms. Tilghman will be making two speeches this graduation season. Princeton, Mr. Quinones said, traditionally has its own president address students.

The Washington Square News’s opinion editor, Jill Filipovic, said in a telephone interview that she understood the administration’s “frustration.”

“They feel they have picked someone who exemplifies the values of our university,” she said. She said, however, some of her classmates were expecting someone “a little more recognizable, someone who has something different to say.”

“We have heard our university president,” she said of John Sexton. “We know the shtick.”

A journalism major, Bret Collazzi,21, said he found Harvard’s 2005 graduation speaker, the actor John Lithgow, to be the “perfect choice.” He predicted Mr. Lithgow would deliver “a little bit of humor, a little bit of cultural references … something to get them excited to get out of here.”

A history major, Darius Longarino, 22, said he would wait to pass judgment until commencement day, which is scheduled for May 12.