The opening event on the Society of Otago University Law Students (SOULS) social calendar, the ‘Hawaiian Stein’, has been rebranded as the ‘Silly Shirt Stein’.
According to the Facebook event information, the renaming took place on 22 February. That was after students questioned whether it was culturally sensitive to encourage people to dress in Hawaiian attire.
The previous description for the event read “Do you wanna get lei’d….? Back and better than ever, it’s the first SOULS event of 2020: HAWAIIAN STEIN. ” The reference to lei in the description has now been removed, and Hawaiian Stein replaced with Silly Shirt Stein.
The tickets to the event, which were sold from 19-26 February along with Course Materials, read ‘Hawaiian Stein’. Multiple Law students confirmed that when they bought course materials, during O Week, they were told about the Hawaiian Stein by name and encouraged to attend.
A fifth year Law student commented: “I guess it’s just the next thing under fire for being cultural appropriation.” He thought that “[s]ometimes, [the scrutiny] is needed but it just goes to show everything is being scrutinised no matter how innocent.”
The event took place on Friday 28 February. Previously, the Hawaiian Stein had been an annual event. Another fifth year Law student said, “I guess it is good that they realised that their theme was wrong and made moves to change it.” They went on to say that it was “a needed shift cause I think that theme has so far been an annual one”.
One student said that if SOULS made that decision “to be more culturally appropriate”, then “that’s probably a good thing”. They also expressed that Silly Shirt Stein was an unusual choice of event name. Students believed that the poor name choice demonstrated that SOULS had not previously considered whether the event’s name was appropriate, and had made a rushed decision to change it at the last minute.
SOULS has since “sincerely apologise[d]” in a statement to Critic, and highlighted that they changed the theme as soon as they were made aware of the issue. “Concerns were brought forward to SOULS highlighting the lack of cultural awareness in holding a Hawaiian Stein event,” SOULS said. “We failed to realise that the hosting of a themed event at which attendees wear Hawaiian shirts was a form of cultural appropriation and disrespectful to Kanaka Maoli.”