Grandfathered into Unc Status

Or, why the fuck is everyone born in the ‘90s calling themselves unc?  

Author: Ox

Let’s roll that back a little. 

I was an avid reader and miniature academic as a child. I was seen as weird and different for this, but books could never judge me by my cover—and I promised to never do the same to them. Year after year, my shelves filled with new titles and new adventures. I had the highest grades in English from primary all the way to high-school graduation.  

Rooted beneath this was a PC reading programme my parents bought in 1999. At two years old, they would sit me on one of their laps with the picture books while the Logitech speakers and CRT monitor showed and told me: “I is for Iceberg. P is for Penguin.” I would clap and laugh and, unlike my sisters,  I did not scream and fidget my way out of learning. 

Maybe it rewired me to find learning fun, or maybe I was always wired that way—mihi to my smart tīpuna. Reader Rabbit came along when I was older, and so did The Magic School Bus games, which taught me about geology, space, and the human body. Even Zoombinis carried life lessons that I didn’t recognise until adulthood. Shoutout to The Learning Company for feeding kids social commentary on slavery, utopian revolution, and taking back the means of production. 

Mentioning these games to people around my age or older brings groans of pain and delight. “Do you remember the minigame where you made rocks and minerals?” Or: “Man, I think about those dumb pizza trolls all the time.” Some of us still have the voice lines burned into our plastic brains and repeat them in unexpected scenarios. 

There’s camaraderie in that, because we remember what it was like “back then.” Back then, we didn’t have Wi-Fi at home, so you had to plug in to get on the net—yes, we really said that. If your parents wanted to call Aunty Melva on the landline—yes, phones had to be plugged in and stayed in one place—you had to stop browsing Wikipedia for your school assignment on Vincent Van Gogh. Yes, Wikipedia was once a primary and reputable source for schoolwork. 

As a facilitator, I now spend most of my time with students born in 2006 or later. My references are often outdated and met with blank stares. In 2025, I uninstalled TikTok from my 2020 iPhone SE second generation, whose software I haven’t updated in over a year because I hate the forced new designs. 

There is a running joke amongst my friends that if our potential partners weren’t alive when the towers fell, they are far too young for us to date. That joke draws some backlash from those same undateables, who say I am being disrespectful by making light of a human disaster. To those people, I ask: are you really upset by my tone, or by the fact that it wasn’t livestreamed for your viewing pleasure?  

The first time I really remember hearing unc used in aotearoa was during a friend's introductory speech in 2025. They said, “yes I was born in 1998. I know—I’ve reached unc status.”

This is something else I’ve noticed about the label: it tends to be self-applied. It is a knee-jerk defense, deployed before the audience has the chance to write you off as being out of touch. If you are self-aware enough to recognise your unc status, that suggests you are still in touch. 

I certainly fell into the out-of-touch category. Shortly afterwards, I got on the web and had to look it up.  

Unc is yet another term stolen from African American Vernacular English that young white kids just couldn’t help appropriating. Wonder where they learnt that from. 

Originally, within the Black communities, it was an affectionate—and sometimes respectful—way to refer to an older Black man who was not necessarily related to you. Today, the Cambridge Dictionary defines unc as a term used especially by young people to refer to an older man, sometimes implying that he is unfashionable or has old-fashioned opinions.

The Black context has been erased, leaving behind more palatable slang that everyone else can wield as a weapon without acknowledging the Black voices and history it came from.  

Unc is not a bad word, but it is no longer a neutral one either.  

Let us return, for a paragraph, to where we are: a university, and what that means. The Medieval Latin word universitas, means “a whole” or “a community.” You can hear the same idea in words such as universe which is the whole cosmos, or unity which is the act of being whole. 

Many universities of the past gathered stale, pale males—mihi to Zia and Pam for introducing this stunner to me—and their ideas under one roof, creating a supposedly complete universe of knowledge. Their curricula involved compulsory classes containing knowledge thought to be essential for any Thinker, regardless of an individual’s speciality or personal interests.  

As education has become more acccessible, and as child labour has been abolished, the idea that some knowledge is essential to living has become the basis of primary and secondary schooling. Need I point out what the labels primary and secondary imply? 

And yet we still treat universities as grounds where history is made and knowledge is built, rather than places where those things are collected, labeled, and archived for convenience. 

I have come to realize that my frustration at being assigned unc status at only 28 is really a mirror for the growing ageism I see in higher education. Students may ignore ageism because they think it doesn’t affect them personally. I hate to tell you this, sweetie: it does.  

Growing up as a white Māori, I was lucky to gain glimpses into te ao Māori and be exposed to some Māoritanga. I learned the tika way of doing things: tables are for glasses, not asses, and wash your hands after visiting tapu places. 

I was instilled with respect for my elders—our kaumātua—not only because they held knowledge on behalf of our iwi, hapū, and hapori, but because they were honest with us moko that we would inevitably take their place. 

I am sure that most of you are no strangers to the fountain-of-youth pandemic consuming society today. Celebrities return from overseas surgeries looking like they could be their own children’s siblings. Self-medicators drink their children's blood in an attempt to reverse the wheels of time.  Botched Botox leaves people who should have aged like fine wine unable to make a frowny face.  

Age does not stop Māori from connecting across wide age gaps, but it does shape the responses we receive from kaumātua we asked to learn from. They may say we are too young to hold and protect the knowledge they could give us, or too young to carry such heavy burdens on our shoulders. 

Very, very rarely, they might say that they will think about having a hui about your ideas and see who else they can connect you to for future kōrero. 

I am proud to say that many of those in my life whom I consider kaumātua are not always so tightly bound to the tika way of doing things—or, at least, know when traditions are meant to be modelled and reshaped anew.  

The kupu you would probably use instead of unc would be matua. There is room for slang here: mat, pronounced: maart. Saying matū might get you in trouble, because it can mean fat—as a noun, not an adjective. But matū also means spirit, essence or the gist of the matter. 

And maybe that is the gist of the matter—the apple’s core I have been digging towards this whole time.  

Te Herenga Waka labels students aged 20 or older, or those who have been “out of education for some time,” as mature students. This makes it clear that the normal route is to jump off the high-school train and straight onto the railroad tracks of higher education. 

As someone who spent $30,000 and two years on Yoobee diplomas that never landed me a job—and never will—and who only found my field of research after a shitty breakup, moving cities, and failing a year of psychology papers, I think that I am rightfully pissed off that we are expected to have our shit together at 18.  

In an article published by the Wellington School of Business on 4 February 2025, the school writes: 

“As a mature student, you will get to bring an abundance of life experience and knowledge into your degree, unlike your younger peers who are just learning the ropes of “how to adult.” You’ve had a head start and might have done it all already, finding the perfect work-life balance, managing relationships with others, and managing your personal finances. It might seem like a lot of change, but you really do have the upper hand when it comes to managing your studies. This diverse perspective can enrich discussions, offer unique insights, and add depth to your assignments.” 

This paragraph underlines why we shouldn’t force high schoolers to learn “how to adult” while asking them to make one of the most consequential financial decisions of their lives. 

Yeah, we already knew that. 

The final statement though—that is the matū.  

When we willingly segregate ourselves by age and write off our elders as out of touch, we lose much of the vibrancy our past has gifted us. 

I will never be my 55-year-old Italian professor, who grew up a devout catholic. I will never be my 57-year-old poetry mentor, who protested in the streets for the Homosexual Law Reform. I will never be my older classmates, with whom I have shared late-night coffees and early-morning lectures. 

And yet, I would be lying if I said the words we have shared had not enriched my life and offered unique insights I could not have reached alone. 

They taught me to make mistakes and keep going. They taught me that there is more to life than getting good grades—although they do help. They taught me that long, boring journeys are far more bearable when you walk them together. 

So, honestly: if you’ve got some uncs—or mats—in your class, take a chance. Ask them what they think. 

Maybe the way they answer will surprise you.