Students protest against cuts at Wellington Open Day

A Massey Students Against Cuts member, Romany Tasker-Poland, held up a banner in front of potential students at the Wellington Open Day opening ceremony.  

Students Against Cuts (SAC) held protests at Massey Wellington and Victoria University on the 25th of August Open Day to express their anger at staff and course cuts.  

Tasker-Poland said, “Massey University and Victoria University see prospective students as dollar signs, and Open Days as an opportunity to sell their brand.” 

“We have a different view. We see Open Day as an opportunity to raise awareness about the attacks that are happening at universities across the country”. 

Students spread posters and leaflets around their campuses to show their “frustration at the disparity between the images presented by university advertising and the reality of tertiary education for students”, said a press release to Massive.  

An art piece in block 2’s Clear View was covered in fabric and chia seeds the night before Open Day, but the morning of, three squares had been cut out to reveal posters that had used Massey’s Open Day marketing against them.  

Wellington students Julia Kohlhaas, Fahsai Chainarong, Ruby Christoffel, Shevana Sammons, and Tobie Parsons created the ‘Off Cuts’ exhibition.  

‘Off Cuts’ posters were taken down outside Tussock Cafe before 8am on Open Day, however, the posters in Clear View were not.  

Posters at Victoria University saying “Staff are the heart of VUW” were taken down from noticeboards. 

Kohlhaas said she kept ‘Off Cuts’ plans a secret for a long as possible to prevent someone from stopping them, only cutting out the fabric and hanging the posters around 10:30pm the night before Open Day.  

The Massey Fine Arts Instagram account posted photos of Chainarong applying the chia seeds before the art was revealed to be against the cuts.  

The ‘Off Cuts’ exhibition is doing an open calling for creative responses posing the question, “If the cuts in education go ahead as planned – what will we miss? What gets ‘Cut Off’?” 

Chainarong said she cannot control if the chia seeds will grow or not. She said as a student, “we want to grow but if the environment of the university doesn’t really take care of us, we can’t”.  

Chainarong and Kohlhaas laughed, explaining that the chia seeds aren’t growing as the environment is too harsh, saying this was pictorial for the situation that is happening at Massey.  

Two students also protested at the Manawatū Open Day on the 2nd of August by chalking “save our papers” outside the library and science buildings.  

The students were given a verbal trespass and followed off campus.  

One staff member was trespassed and escorted off campus along with the student for watching and recording the interaction with security.  

If you’d like to submit a response to ‘Off Cuts’ before the exhibition held on the 9-14th of October, email off.cuts.2023@gmail.com or head to their social media.  

Massey University declined to comment.