“Screw you, Sentamu!”

Selwyn’s JCR has slammed the Archbishop of York in an open letter following his comments on gay marriage.

When talking about government plans to legalise same-sex marriage, John Sentamu, an alumnus of the college, stated that “marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman” and compared people who would try to reclassify it to “dictators.”

Sentamu on a visit to Selwyn in 2006

The views were met with disgust from Selwyn students, with Lewis Bartlett, LGBT officer for the college, proposing the motion to send the letter.

“I thought it important to make it clear that the current generation of Selwyn students oppose discrimination.” Bartlett told the Tab.“In all honesty, I can’t believe we still have to campaign over this, but obviously clear sense and judgement won out.”

Over two thirds of voters decided to send the letter, which slams the Archbishop’s views as “overly simplistic” and “completely unfounded”, but includes an invitation for him to speak about them at the college.

Second year James Mottram was among those in favour of sending the letter, telling the Tab that “it’s entirely proper for the JCR to take a stand when such a prominent alumnus is publicly supporting a wrong-headed attitude.”

Sentamu joined Selwyn in 1973, becoming a priest in Cambridge six years later. He was ordained in Selwyn chapel and started his church career there as an Assistant Chaplain.

Selwyn’s move comes more than a week after the Students Union at the University of York took similar action, with Tim Ellis, YUSU president, saying that he “felt ashamed to be a member of the same city as the Archbishop”