Kia ora everyone,
Yesterday we hit 5000 signatures which is a huge achievement and I'm really thankful and overwhelmed by your support. I'll be making sure that both the petition, as well as the comments left by petitioners, will be supplied to both Vic and the Minister of Education by making them part of the feedback I provide on the proposal.
On that note, at the two public meetings so far run by Victoria, Vice Chancellor Grant Guilford has been disparaging of our petition. While this is a disappointing attitude for the Vice Chancellor to take, it reinforces the importance of not just signing this petition, but also taking the time to email feedback@vuw.ac.nz and c.hipkins@ministers.govt.nz to share your opposition to the proposal and the reasons behind it. As always, I encourage you to be constructive and respectful in the feedback you provide.
Feedback must be provided to the university by 5pm on Monday 13 August, so there's less than a week to do this.
In my spare time I've been continuing to do what I can to raise awareness of the name change proposal and the concerns surrounding both the case made by the university and the process used to get us to this point.
I spoke to Newstalk ZB's Larry Williams on Monday evening: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/larry-williams-drive/audio/gwynn-compton-victoria-uni-name-change-wont-have-desired-impact/ and attended Monday night's public meeting on the name change where I raised concerns about the university's claims of having support for their proposal when we have managed to collect so many signatures in such a short time that are opposed and have raised significant concerns about the process involved: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/106088073/victoria-university-staff-among-latearriving-opponents-to-proposed-name-change
I also did an interview with 1News recently for a story that's being worked on, but I'm not sure when that's likely to run but keep an eye out on my Twitter account @gwynncompton https://twitter.com/gwynncompton and I'll be sure to post it there.
Once again, thank you for your support. It's been an incredible and humbling experience to be involved in this, and I'm hopeful that the University Council will listen to our feedback and take it to heart when they're considering whether to progress this further or to head back to the drawing board.
- Gwynn