Chancellor Birdshaw feathering her nest

This illustration was written to accompany a very good article by Contributing Writer Daniel Hugo.  In it, Hugo blasts University of Hawaii at Manoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw for being largely ineffective and concerned predominantly with helping herself. Unfortunately, Hugo also predicts that our next Chancellor will be no better as he or she will come out of the same corrupt, nepotistic and self-destructive process that came up with Hinshaw as top choice to lead our campus 5 years ago.

So why is she a Bird?

Starting over a year ago, we at Ka Leo noticed a distinct Avian-like appearance to the Chancellor in many of her photos.  We are still unsure as to whether it's some trick of the camera that picks up her subtle bird-qualities, qualities that are otherwise overlooked by the naked eye, or whether  we just happen to be really lucky and take pictures of her at the exact few moments in her life when she looks the most bird-like.  Either way, she totally looks like a bird in at least two thirds of the pictures Ka Leo has taken of her.
Starting with the fall 2011 Welcome Back issue, I began drawing an avian version of Hinshaw, though I kept it subtle and in the background and never actually labeled the bird as her (though that distinctly horrid haircut of hers is definitely there).  For this article, I simply decided to re-draw Birdshaw, but nice and big, for all to see.