Two excellent pieces against the proposed Vic name change

Gwynn Compton has an op ed at Stuff against the name change and a group of graduates, staff and students have done a very detailed paper destroying the case for change.

Compton notes:

The agenda for the upcoming University Council meeting on the decision glosses over the significant issues raised about the name change, specifically concerns with how the consultation process was undertaken and with the deeply flawed business case.

However, the most crucial slight of hand in their recommendation was ignoring the fact an overwhelming 75 per cent of submissions received were in opposition to the name change.

It’s not explicitly mentioned once.

Instead, in their commentary they prefer to highlight 53 per cent of staff who made submissions were supportive, as well as the nebulous “stakeholder” category where 80 per cent of submissions were in favour.

Unsurprisingly, they chose to not highlight that 92 per cent of student submissions were opposed, as were 81 per cent of alumni. Those only appear in the summary table.

92% of student submissions against and 81% of alumni. How could the Council or the Minister possibly conclude a mandate for change.

And from the detailed document against:

The VC and Council do not appreciate that VUW would lose its current identity and all the established prestige, hard-earned quality reputation and recognition, let alone invaluable goodwill, which has been built up over the years. Likewise all the value within citations of academic records and papers would be lost, creating havoc and loss of recognition for actual staff and students with published research papers.

Further actual graduates would have degrees from a university that no longer exists in name, confusing potential employers, and lowering the value of those qualifications worked and paid for through thousands of
hours of effort and their cold hard cash. Fundamentally the university that has existed for 120 years would in one fell swoop be deleted: the only part of the name that has existed since day one is “Victoria”.

Yep a name change damages graduates massively.