Nearly $33K Greta Thunberg statue blasted as inappropriate ‘vanity project’

A life-sized bronze statue of environmentalist Greta Thunberg unveiled Tuesday at England’s University of Winchester has some students wondering if the nearly $33,000 monument was money well spent during a pandemic.

“We’re in a COVID year, lots of students haven’t really had access to campus, lots of them are trying to study online and are in dire need of support,” Winchester University and College Union president Megan Ball told the BBC.

The student union calls Thunberg a “fantastic role model,” and makes clear the issue is with the statue, which it calls a “vanity project,” and not the person that monument honors.

A tweet from the Winchester University and College Union adds, “The university’s distinctive approach to commissioning pieces of art is to do so in unminuted meetings and/or avoid any committee scrutiny. Not the ideal approach when spending university money.”

The student union is now pressuring the university to match that spending in the form of “student support services across campus.”

University officials defend that no monies were diverted from student support or staffing to finance the statue. In fact, the university reportedly claimed that nearly $7.3 million has been spent on student services in the past year.

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“We know that many find her a controversial figure. As a university we welcome debate and critical conversations,” the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Joy Carter told the BBC. “We hope that her statue will help to inspire our community, reminding us that no matter what life throws at us we can still change the world for the better.”

Thunberg, 18, is a Swedish native who was been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times on account of her environmental activism.