The blue bird logo has had its wings clipped and will be replaced by a "W" on a red shield. University of Western Sydney students have started a #savethebird campaign to keep the old logo. Some students are less than inspired by the university's new identity. Student Representative Council president Jarrod Bradley said the money required for the rebrand could have been better spent. Mr Bradley said he was told that $20 million had been set aside for marketing the university over the next two years and he expected a large part to be spent on the rollout of the new brand.

"I believe these funds could have been used in a much more effective way," he said. "More scholarships to attract the bright, young minds of the future, especially those from less-wealthy backgrounds. Better classes, more courses and more variety of units of study." Illustration: Cathy Wilcox Others are also frustrated that they were not consulted about the change, with some only finding out when a tutor off-handedly mentioned it in class and a photo of the logo was leaked. A #savethebird campaign has been launched with a call-out for students to wear blue ribbons in support of keeping the bird. "We, the UWS community, have been let down," one student wrote in the university newspaper crUWSible.

"Kept in the dark while a plot was at hand to strip us of our collective identity ... we fear for the future of the establishment we have come to call a second home." A petition rallying against the new name and logo has been started on change.org and has attracted nearly 2000 supporters. "We want to graduate and walk out with that blue bird on our bachelor cert to remind us of how great UWS really is. Another symbol would mean nothing to us. So please keep the blue bird and nothing else!" one signatory said.

Scathing comments have also been left on online forums, with one user comparing the logo with that of the fictional company owned by Batman, Wayne Enterprises. The University of Western Sydney has been one of the fastest-growing universities in the country in recent years. It has seven campuses around greater western Sydney and more than 75 per cent of its students live in the region. The name change and logo puts western Sydney at the university's front and centre at a time when it is expanding its services to new areas, including building a new multi-million dollar city campus in the Parramatta CBD and opening a centre in Liverpool. The university would not answer questions about the cost of the name change or the reasons behind it.

In a statement, a spokesperson said the university would be in a position to share more on Open Day on August 30. "The University sits at the heart of Australia's fastest growing and most vibrant community, an area that is transforming rapidly," the spokesperson said. "We need to ensure we are at the forefront of that change and, indeed, helping to drive it." Staff have been told that their @uws.edu.au email address will be replaced with @westernsydney.edu.au and they must remove "old logos" from their signatures from August 31. While the change has drawn criticism from some students, others were simply not fazed.