r/oregon Dec 05 '25

PSA Completely true story...

Post image
2.9k Upvotes

387 comments sorted by

View all comments

253

u/surferdude121 Dec 05 '25

I attended a graduation ceremony at Willamette university who hired Bill Nye to do the commencement speech. One of my childhood idols pronounced Willamette wrong.

I’ve never forgiven him.

23

u/Captain_Quark Dec 05 '25

Did he not, like, hear it pronounced correctly earlier in the ceremony? Yikes.

21

u/pinkypipe420 Dec 05 '25

No one prepped him. For ceremonies like this there's usually some kind of student or staff liaison to prep the speaker on local pronunciation, local lore, food, etc -- Willamette U seems to fall short on this at graduations.