Opinion: The death of blue and gold

Kev Heieis is a seventh-year integrated engineering student who is passionate about improving campus community. He ran for VP administration in the 2024 AMS Elections (second place) and is currently the AMS special projects lead.

Do you know UBC’s colours?

I don’t — and to me, it seems that UBC is just as clueless. The colours are undefined, arbitrary and their lack of existence dampens campus culture.

It’s game day. The foul UVic Vikes have ferried from Vancouver Island to challenge our Thunderbirds. Is campus different from a normal day? Even pre-COVID, this indifference was widespread outside a party-focused homecoming.

From what I can tell, not only are students generally unaware of sports games occurring — but students do not have a way to show pride. Looking at merchandise in the Bookstore, it seems UBC is catering to subcultures, using green for Forestry or purple for Arts. There is a lack of coordination in branding to associate the school with, because over time, UBC has bleached our campus colours.

How did we get here

Blue and gold have represented UBC since 1916 when the Senate approved the colours, eight years after the campus was first established.

Around 2009, UBC began a transition away from blue and gold. Homecoming photo albums from over the years show a disorganized shift from blue and gold to a soup of darker shades. Photos from Homecoming 2017 show an atmosphere animated with bright blue and gold.

2019 was the last homecoming before COVID. I was there watching, sheltered from the rain in the stands, wrapped in a blue and gold scarf I had won the year prior. Despite showing pride with that colourful rag, I felt alone. By then, the jerseys and the fans had lost their colour.

The university’s branding website says UBC’s “primary & secondary” colours are navy and white. UBC and AMS Archives have been unable to find any declaration of a colour change, meaning the “official” colours are still blue and gold.

Nearly a century of blue and gold culture begs the question of why UBC pivoted to be so corporate, shifting to neutral colours that put a leash on expression. When I reached out about why UBC made the change, a branding representative wrote back that “[gold] was dropped to simplify printing and to increase the flexibility and readability of the logo,” and that previously there was never any consistency in the specific yellow used.

Why do UBC colours matter?

Entering my seventh year at UBC, I question the inclusivity of campus-wide traditions I have tried over the years, which failed to capture my engagement long-term.

Annual events like Day of the LongBoat, Undie Run, Polar Bear Swim and Block Party are great fun if you are adventurous. However, they share one similarity I find to be the epitome of lacking campus culture: they are not events you go to alone.

It seems common at UBC to attend events with at least another friend. I have fought my way through social anxiety so I know how tough it can be to rally a squad. This is not to say you cannot do something alone — the challenge with Vancouver and UBC is that there is no one to encourage you except yourself, if your friends aren’t down.

On a campus with real spirit, the intrinsic energy of the environment would be enough motivation. You could slap on campus colours before an event and leave with friends even if you went alone. The key here is that wearing campus colours connects you with an in-group despite not knowing each other. Visual identification breaks down the toughest barriers to forming social connections by showing commonality.

Colour schemes can be seen vividly within sports teams, countries and political parties. These are national- to international-level organizations and institutions, but colour branding is just as powerful within smaller communities.

For example, UBC engineering students can be easily distinguished by their red jackets. These lettermans (called Reds) hold immense importance to engineering student life. When the buttons snap together, a measly student contributes to engineering culture; now being associated with pranks and socialization rather than math and isolation.

Looking campus-wide, the “Blue Crew” was a community passionate about varsity sports events, highlighted by blue outfits. The program was created by UBC Athletics, and the culture it created grew event attendance consistently after starting in 2006. The Blue Crew disappeared over the years and their remains are kept only in articles about dying campus spirit. What happened?

In a 2016 Ubyssey article, former AMS President Aaron Bailey described UBC’s initiative as “Buy a season’s pass, here’s a free t-shirt. Hopefully you show up to games,” which implies UBC was not setting up the Blue Crew for success. It is also a testament to how culture cannot be maintained by students alone.

Bouncing back

If we students cannot fix campus culture on our own, what is needed to rebuild it? The easy answer is first-year students. COVID lockdowns allowed a reset for engineering culture, skyrocketing engagement indicated with how Reds were sold: 45 in 2020/21 compared to 242 in 2023/24.

Two years of engineering students had no expectations coming back to in-person school life and went along with the energy fed to them. The same can be done campus-wide with incoming first years who have no expectations. They will believe campus culture exists if UBC acts like it does, and by virtue, culture will form.

First-years wear Imagine Day shirts as proudly as the key card lanyards around their necks because the university is new and they want to feel a sense of belonging. But they need a reason to hold onto this belonging. I think that if these shirts were blue and gold, campus would be blossoming with colour by the end of Imagine Day.

I envision a campus where students bond deeply purely because UBC is a shared identity. Bright colours stand out — and standing out is what strengthens identity.

So much potential was lost from the death of blue and gold. These colours can still be revived if UBC puts the effort in. But perhaps by starting this conversation, these historic colours will return bright and bold, giving students a reason to make UBC a stronger part of their identity.

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