The logo is steeped in history that accurately represents the university, its origin and broader historical background. The logo’s St Andrew’s Cross dates back to Christ’s crucifixion. Legend has it that St Andrew’s bones are interned in St Andrews, Scotland.
The university's coat of arms was granted by Scotland’s Lord Lyon King of Arms. The buildings are of gothic Scot’s design and clearly intended to invoke the ancient university buildings of Scotland and England and reflect the Scottish passion for education.
The foundational contribution of Scots to the establishment and growth of Dunedin and Otago is well documented. The logo represents all these and many more and broader historical events and culture.
Should the deep history and Scottish contribution be relegated to the past rather than celebrated and remembered?
I am an Otago graduate; two generations of my wife’s family are of Scottish-Ngai Tahu decent and also Otago graduates. I am proud of both heritages.
I would hope that everyone would celebrate their Ngai Tahu, Scots or other descent without the need to reinvent everything with a Māori core. As a representative of the iwi, the representative’s comments can be understood, but what is the university’s excuse or is it a reflection of the university’s decline?
Tom Perkins
Wanaka
Road and rail
Ross Johnston (ODT, 25.7.23) bemoans the fact that we have to spend money repairing our roads while other countries experience natural disasters. It may be a surprise to some environmentalists but it is possible to both act on climate issues and maintain the country we live in at the same time. The fact there are serious global goals to work towards doesn't mean we can just ignore our everyday issues. While we navigate a future where projects such as restoring rail will help to reduce our carbon footprint we still need to eat, and almost everything consumed in Otago today gets here by truck.
Duane Donovan
Bradford
Throttled roads
I write in reference to the article on the ODT (25.7.23) about the Dunedin City Council and emissions reductions. The photo used on the article actually says a lot about the failure of DCC planning over the past five years.
An little or unused bike lane and a main road throttled by the reduction from three to two lanes. I wonder how many tonnes of emissions would be saved by unblocking that road and allowing traffic to flow. Or maybe our green tinted town planners believe that idling vehicles in blocked traffic don't have emissions. It seem that the staff of DCC do not understand that Dunedin ratepayers and voters have roundly rejected the previous Green-led council’s views on most things.
In particular the ideas of elimination private use of motor vehicles, be they combustion powered or otherwise. The idea that simply removing parking and throttling roads will somehow enable a pensioner in Maori Hill to cycle into town to do their shopping seems to be quite reasonable in some minds. DCC's planners and schemers need to actually look out their office windows. Dunedin is not flat. And other than the few who live on the flat, cycling will never be a year around solution for most transport needs.
Keith McCabe
Sunbury
Supremacy and racism: best look it up
Harry Love (ODT, 24.7.23) questions the proposition that "white supremacy" encompasses "systems and structures" that are intrinsically racist, and the prevalence of "unconscious racism" in our societies.
Those of us in the cheap seats, familiar with the casual racism that, with repetition, has become part of the vernacular that stigmatises minority groups, would probably say the answer lies in raising the level of class consciousness — and , to that end, it has been the subject of many scholarly studies.
One such Relation Between Racial Discrimination, Social Class, and Health Among Ethnic Minority Groups (in England and Wales) by Saffron Karlsen, MSc and James Y Nazoo, PhD from the Dept of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, is particularly relevant.
It found the different ways in which racism may manifest itself (as interpersonal violence, institutional discrimination, or socioeconomic disadvantage) all have independent detrimental effects on health, regardless of the health indicator used.
It found institutional racism leads to the concentration of ethnic minority groups in conditions of social and economic disadvantage — having lower incomes, congregating in environmentally and economically poorer geographic areas, in poorer quality and overcrowded accommodations, less desirable occupations and in longer periods of unemployment than their ethnic majority counterparts.
As for "unconscious racism", the study calls it "aversive racism", and it's almost a study in itself.
Best look it up.
Susan Hall
Oamaru
BIBLE READING: Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty. — Psalms 24:8.
