Opinion: #SluttyfortheButty

For the past couple of months, I have been on a personal crusade. No, not to get the window fixed in the Salient office (but it was nice that that happened). No, not to victimise VUWSA with overly researched and pedantic hit pieces (but that scratched an itch in my brain I haven’t felt since my last Salient survey). No, my crusade has arguably benefitted students much less: to bring back Bacon Buttys at the Hunter Lounge.

Picture this: two thick, crispy slabs of sourdough bread, a bed of tomato chutney, and, on top of it, fresh rocket, salt, pepper, and freshly cooked bacon. All of this on top of a small mountain of fries, served between classes, after exams, to the struggling, sleep-deprived students at Te Herenga Waka.

This glorious, beautifully crisp and golden-brown, absolutely not vegetarian-friendly dish has been ripped away by the powers of the Hunter Lounge.

When I asked Jack Barber, owner of the Hunter Lounge, why it had been taken from us, I was met by, firstly, surprise that I was actually audio-recording so it would be on record, and secondly, the dreaded journalistic phrase that stops investigations in their tracks: “No comment.”

Heartbroken.

So, I put up a poll on Salient’s Instagram. Surely, I couldn’t be the only one missing this glorious morsel. And I found this: when polled, 90% of students thought that the Hunter Lounge should bring back the Bacon Butty. That’s 99 individual students. Only 11 said no!

Then, I thought that I wasn’t thinking large enough. First-years this year wouldn’t know what a Bacon Butty is. So I did another poll, asking students if the Hunter Lounge sold Bacon Buttys, would they buy one? 112 students said yes. That was 85% of respondents.

Now, I am not brash enough to assume that every single student who answered our social media survey would buy one. We are in a cost of living crisis, after all. Though, I think I would trade my position as Editor for a Bacon Butty if someone wanted to offer me that option. But those who responded to our polls were passionate: one anonymous student said the lack of buttys made them “question if God really loves us,” another said, “having just come to Vic I am offended at the removal of a classic that I was unaware existed,” another, our sub-editor, suggested the slogan “#sluttyforthebutty,” which I have taken on the campaign trail wholeheartedly.

But what are words with no action? What is text, shouting into the void in hunger, without asking for real change? On 24 April, VUWSA hosted their Drugs Quiz, and guess who was the host? None other than me, your Editor-in-Chief. And you know what I did? I hijacked the quiz that was an educational platform about decriminalising drugs, and turned it into my own personal agenda: to get the Bacon Buttys back.

Have you ever been in a room of students, all yelling in time “SluttyfortheButty”? Oh, it was glorious. One of the best moments in my life. A moment which was only beaten when, nearing the end of the quiz, and nearing the end of my jug of Hunter Lager, something came out of the kitchen… It was as if a golden light had come down from the gods above and onto the bar at that very moment. I was brought: a real-life Bacon Butty.

I swear, I got two bites of that thing before my friends descended on it like hungry seagulls. At least four people ate that butty, everyone wanted a try, and no one was disappointed. You can see the genuine elation on my face in the photos below (when the butty was intact and freshly served).

I write this now, not to run a victory lap over all 112 of you students who did not get a butty, but to call, once more, for collective action. Please, when you’re next in the Hunter Lounge, ask for Jack at the bar, and plead, beg, bargain, do whatever you have to do to get these buttys back on the menu. Together, we can make collective change. Together, we can bring back the butty.