The UCD Sustainable Pen
There’s something troubling about this artifact. What appears at first to be another of the hundreds of variations on “spirit pens,” this UC Davis implement is something else entirely. It is actually a plastic pen–perhaps of the bic variety?–wrapped with a thin layer of cardboard onto which the UCD logo is affixed (and a note indicating that it is “recycled material” is added). Topping off this creation is a popsicle-stick like clip that is attached directly to the plastic pen top and can, one assumes, enable the user to affix the pen to the interior of a pocket–a scenario in which only the popsicle stick would protrude.
I don’t believe the UC Davis gurus of promotional products mean this to be funny. Jokes that pass plastics off as good for the environment products don’t tend to get a laugh these days. It’s possible that this is a sign that our sales and marketing team is losing their edge–certainly this is not a great product on several levels. Green washing has to go right alongside peeling cardboard, cracking popsicle sticks, and depleted ink on the list of “poor design qualities.”
Yet let’s imagine just for a moment that we might need to take this pen seriously as what it claims to be: a symbol of our university. That’s when things get scary.
In the day of business plans and bottom lines, is it too much of a stretch to imagine that this pen symbolizes the precarious nature of knowledge itself in the modern research university? With class sizes growing and the pressure to “make something” and “bring in funding” (even in the humanities) we may find ourselves teaching students who never get deeper than superficial concepts and producing work that looks neat but has little there there, ultimately. Maybe we are becoming the professorial equivalent of cardboard plastic pens stating our “recycled material.”
and that is definitely not funny.
It seems that our university has taken a page from New York City’s 1970’s playbook when the city, through a series of “public-private partnerships” basically gutted public services and invested fully in its rebranding as an artistic and tourist destination. For the full, horrifying and brilliantly-written story, see Miriam Greenberg’s book Branding New York.