Goodbye Grant

Words by Janhavi Gosavi (she/her)

By the end of next week, we at Victoria University of Wellington will bid adieu to our infamous Vice-Chancellor Grant Guilford. Guilford’s name has been synonymous with VUW since he started here in 2014, and the announcement of his retirement had been a mild-to-spicy topic of conversation around uni. 

Earlier this month, I sat down with the enigma himself for his last ever interview with Salient. 

I thought we’d start with a trip down memory lane. 

Let's throw it back to when you were at university, where you studied veterinary science and philosophy. How did your education prepare you for your role as VC? 

Grant cited four main skills: people management, delegation, having a diagnostic approach to problem solving, and crisis management. Working as a VC was similar to being a veterinarian because he was required to “act immediately on limited information”. Whether it was saving an animal or forming the university’s responses earthquakes, protests, and bomb threats, he learned to “trust the people underneath [him]” to help him make critical decisions. 

One of the things you’re most known for is your push to change the name of our university. What were you aiming to achieve and how do you feel about how it all panned out? 

We’ve ended up with a “good sort of compromise, which is the name of the game” so he is “pleased”. He’s especially happy with the prominence that our new te reo Māori name ‘Te Herenga Waka’ now has within the University’s branding. Centring a Māori name that was not just a “simple translation of our English name” was a “fundamental part” of Grant’s aim to get equivalence between western and Māori traditions. This aim, he says, got lost in the name change controversy. His other aim was to “anchor the name in the university’s tūrangawaewae—Wellington”. Doing this would “protect the mana of our graduates”, so they could be globally recognised as being from Wellington’s university, not Melbourne’s Victoria University. 

He sees the name change as an ongoing discussion that might be picked up again in the future. For him, the “Victoria era” has been good to the university for the past 150 years, but it's a “colonial era of the past”, one we can leave behind as we move towards the “Te Herenga Waka era”. 

Out of everything you have achieved in your time at VUW, what are you most proud of? 

Grant smiles his wee old man smile. He highlights the Ngā Hoe a Kupe Pathfinder scholarship programme, targeted at low decile schools in Wellington. Principals from those schools choose the recipients based on their school’s values and “as a result, it attracts young leaders” to VUW. 

It's ironic that the achievement he’s most proud of is also what got him “in hot water” his first year on the job. The scholarship was funded by the sale of VUW’s old Karori campus, a sale he finalised for which he received backlash from the community. “It was my first exposure to Wellington’s ability to resist and stop things [...] there are people in the city who are very good at personally attacking the people involved in the decision as well as the decision itself”. 

The obvious follow up question is: what are you least proud of?

Grant didn’t answer straight away, yarning on about how he fundamentally doesn’t lack pride in any of his decisions. He eventually cited the partnership between Te Kōkī (VUW’s music school) and Wellington City Council that happened in order to get our students into Wellington Town Hall, but only because it is still in the works and has taken longer than intended. 

You used to host ‘Rant With Grant’, an annual event held in the Hub where students had the opportunity to directly speak with you. What was the purpose of that event and why did you stop doing it? 

Grant said it was about answering questions that were free-form, claiming to prefer non-scripted styles of conversation free of an “agenda”. In his words, it was an effective and enjoyable way for him to listen to students. 

“There was no active decision to stop it”, he said. As per Salient archives, this event was last held in 2017. Grant guessed it “got lost in the busyness” of Covid-19, and wanted me to note that there were formal mechanisms through which he regularly met with students. The Student Assembly, VUWSA, Pasifika Students Council and Ngāi Tauira were a few groups he highlighted as having contact with. 

“I’d love to see it start again”, he nodded. 

I agree. You see, I’ve been at VUW since 2019 yet today is the first time I’ve seen you in person. To what extent do you think it's a VC’s responsibility to maintain a face-to-face relationship with students? 

“I think it's a big responsibility”, admitted Grant, who began to acknowledge it was, in fact, important to reinstate Rant With [Insert Name of New Vice-Chancellor]. Since the VC becomes the scapegoat for every poor decision made by the University, I would’ve loved the opportunity to raise concerns with him in person while I was still a student. 
Neither the University nor VUWSA, who organised the event, could tell me why Rant With Grant was cancelled. 

Grant reckoned “only a small percentage of students are interested in what the VC thinks” and that “this is the way it should be”. Considering how often his name has been in the media these past few years and the sheer number of students who have called for his resignation, I beg to differ. 

I then asked him a few questions from other students. 

Maddi, a student at VUW, asked how you have fulfilled your obligations to Te Tiriti o Waitangi? 

Not gonna lie, Grant seemed very prepared to discuss the treaty. I’ll let you decide how legitimate his answers are. 

He started by saying “I feel very committed to the treaty, I’m a sixth-generation Kiwi, I’ve lived and breathed this for a long time”. The University has a treaty statute and treaty principles it follows, and Grant stated there was currently an audit happening to measure their progress against those principles. 

Grant mentioned having a significant Māori caucus on the board of governors, moving graduation partially back to the University’s marae, encouraging staff to consider mātauranga Māori in their research, having te reo signage around campuses, and building the Living Pā—“a physical manifestation of having a marae at the heart of the university”. 

“I’m proud of the progress we have made in the past eight years [...] but there’s still a long way to go”. He also acknowledged the contributions of Rawinia Higgins, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Māori), who helped achieve the aforementioned changes. 

Another student, Kane, wanted to know if you were a cat person, and if there was a particular local cat you supported? 

Despite finding this question amusing, Grant gave a genuine answer, “I used to be a cat and dog vet, but I do favour dogs”. He went on to say that his interests in native wildlife conservation brought him into moral conflict with cats. 

Lastly, I wanted to look to the future. 

What kind of a person do you hope our new VC is? 

Grant ultimately hoped the next VC “understood the nature of New Zealand, the treaty, and the ‘Te Herenga Waka era’”. 

What is one piece of advice you would give to the new VC?

“Learn to take private satisfaction in the success of others”, said Grant. I thought that was pretty fucking poetic. 

Is there an effort being made to find a VC that is not a pākehā man? How would having a VC who is a woman, particularly a non-pākehā one, benefit VUW? 

While Grant is removed from the hiring process, he is “sure there is” an effort being made to find diverse candidates. He describes the process as being broadly inclusive, one that would welcome women and POC “without discriminating against the pākehā man”. I tried not to laugh. 

Grant said that having a non-pākehā woman as VC would set up VUW as a university that believes everyone has the ability to succeed at the highest level. 

Twenty years from now, where do you see VUW? 

Grant hopes VUW gets recognised as “a world leading capital city university”, and that our “world class teaching excellence and research” is recognised in the university’s international standing. 

Here’s the thing. I don’t doubt for a second that Grant Guilford wholeheartedly loves our university. There’s a twinkle in his eye when he speaks about this institution and the people in it. But Grant only sees us on our best days, when we are graduating or have won an academic prize. His inability to look ordinary students in the eye and listen to their grievances has left him out of touch with our realities. 

Consider the following an open letter to our next Vice-Chancellor.

I hope you put students at the centre of your role. I hope you commit to consistently speaking to us, face to face. Not just to the representatives we elect, that sit on committees we haven’t heard of. I want to see you at O-Week every year, welcoming freshers to Pōneke. I want you to equally engage with all three of our main campuses and regularly attend student events. When shit hits the fan for our community, I want you to show up in person to offer support and take accountability. 

And yeah, once a year, I want you to sit in the Hub for a few hours and give us all the opportunity to rant at you. 

I hope you make time for us. God knows we’ll pay you enough to.