The removal of portraits depicting former Obstetrics (the medical speciality of childbirth and postpartum), Gynaecology and Women’s Health Heads of Departments from the Med School has caused rumours to circulate. A little birdy told Critic Te Ārohi that some students had found them “intimidating”. Do the eyes follow students as they walk? Critic investigates.
When approached by Critic (wearing a tin hat and towing a vacuum cleaner labelled ‘Ghost Buster’), the University said that the removal was not due to any student consultation, but rather “an operational change for the [Med] school.” The portraits were reportedly removed to make the rooms “more fitting to provide excellent learning environments” and the reformed rooms were to be more suitable for teaching. This is probably Uni lingo for
“students are too scared to study in those rooms”. Probably.
Due to the University's failure to survey the fear of Med School students, Critic decided to take matters into their own hands – taking a trip to the Hocken Library, where the portraits now reside and politely asking the archivists to drag out the cursed portraits so we could see what we were working with, hands to hips and sporting our best investigative fedora.
Will, a first-year Health Science student, said that the portraits weren’t intimidating at all when Critic presented him with pictures of the portraits for reference. Will reckoned that they “reminded him of his grandad”, and as someone who doesn’t daydream enough when they’re learning about boring stuff like medicine, he said that he “probably wouldn’t notice them at all.”
Another student, Mase, admitted that “anyone that’s in a suit and in a black and white photograph, I’m automatically scared of”. He also went on to say that while he's not so sure that the portrait would affect his learning, he “wouldn’t want them as a camp counsellor”.
Critic, inspired by a recent bout of recommended chemtrail posts on Facebook, asked Mase if he thought portraits were going missing across campus more frequently (maybe they gained sentience). “Yes, but only temporarily, as they’re replacing them with ones that have cameras in the eyes.” Critic then sought clarification from Mase (who clearly knew his shit) about whether the removal of portraits had anything to do with the University’s logo change. He confirmed that it “definitely did” and then refused to elaborate further.
Critic Te Ārohi was too scared to reach out to any of the former Heads of Department for comment. We also didn’t reach out to any current Heads of Department either, for fear of retaliatory portrait removal. That’d suck.