The Uni launched its new brand last week. Predictably, with the news came a parade of trolls snarling and gnashing their teeth at the “woke” and “tokenistic” new tohu (symbol) and ikoa Māori (name). The usual protocol would be to sit back and let them tire themselves out before moving onto the next thing to be angry about, but this one seemed worth an editorial.
It’s time we stopped calling the new Uni tohu a banana. Look, I get it. I had the same thought at first when I saw the proposed logo last year. Critic’s designer Evie tells me that this sort of thing can happen pretty easily with design. During her degree, there were plenty of accidental vaginal or swastika-adjacent logos. In this case, the yellow colouring of the logo also doesn’t help matters.
Now I like bananas just as much as the next guy. I have one in a smoothie every morning. I’m even wearing banana socks right now (stolen from an ex, chur). Heck, I apparently like them so much that between the cover and centrefold last week there was somehow a banana theme. But the banana joke is dead, fellas. It’s not only flogging a dead horse at this stage – it’s pissing on its grave.
The jokes and the online vitriol are completely overlooking what the rebrand means. The name Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka is a metaphor for a place of many firsts. For legacy Castle St breathas, the significance of this might not go deeper than uni being the first time living away from home, making a spaghetti bolognese from scratch, or using the Havard citation method.
But as Te Rōpū Māori Tumuaki Gemella explained in her speech at the ceremony, for many tauira Māori, attending Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka is a first. For the Uni to rebrand in such close collaboration with mana whenua to create such a personal ikoa Māori and tohu to our university, it goes far deeper than being a “tokenistic” gesture, as Facebook’s comment section barnacles suggest.
No one who was at the brand launch who listened to the beautiful speeches and waiata last Wednesday would say what the trolls are. And that’s exactly it – they weren’t there. They are bashing something that they have next to no context of. They probably read a headline with a big scary price tag (to be fair, it is rather large) and headed straight to the comment section to battle it out with playground insults and a frightening number of ellipses (seriously, why so ominous?)
As for the price tag, it really was rather unfortunate that the news of the Uni’s mismanaged funds and budget hole coincided with the launch of the Tuakiritaka project consultation. However, there’s a big difference between investing in the University’s future as an inclusive space that reflects the diversity and heritage of our campus, and the short-sighted and successive rounds of cuts to staffing, courses, and academic resources. Just because both come with a price tag, don’t make the error of mistaking the two.
So, to the people who keep sending Snaps to Critic of bananas forming a circle, and commenting on articles about the rebrand with that same drawing that looks like it was pinched from a minion’s craft table – maybe read about what you’re making fun of before you turn into a Dunedin News boomer.