On Wednesday, The Cheese Grater sent out a blanket invite to all four candidates competing to be Media Rep – Altay Shaw, Robert Delaney, Maria Kliuchnikova, and Yixiao Huang – to contribute to our Voices column on why they should be the next Societies Rep for Student Media.
At press time, we have received one response from Robert Delaney.
Dear voters, readers, and the student media community at large,
As The Cheese Grater and Pi have noted many times before, democracy at our university is in peril. With the chronic issues of unfilled positions, low turnouts and unresponsive representatives, our Students’ Union (SU) has a serious issue with democratic backsliding.
One core reason for the downturn taken by our democracy in recent years is the lack of media presence in holding those elected to represent your interests to account. As Seth Harris noted (CG 88), it is our fault as student journalists for not being quicker off the mark to expose our elected representatives for their major shortcomings which emerge almost every year.
This failure to report on the damages done to student democracy ultimately impacts us as members of the student community and it is why I’m running to be your student media representative for the 2024/25 academic year.
For too long our community has been underfunded, understaffed and underrepresented. This is all despite the innate importance of student media and journalism to the fruition of a coherent, thriving and democratic university at large.
In UCL and the SU’s joint Student Life Strategy (SLS), student media is given a single vague bullet point on page 13, epitomising the amount of attention paid to our large, highly active and intrinsically important community.
If I have the honour to serve as your student media representative I would do all in my power to expand the remit of the SLS to fully incorporate your interests as student journalists.
I am an avid historian and archivist of student life and have spent nearly my entire Summer working as a research fellow in the IOE with specific focus on the history of student media at UCL. Through my work with UCL Special Collections (archive services) on the GenerationUCL project, I have had the pleasure of reading old issues of Pi, The Cheese Grater, Era and a host of other specialist publications.
In my research, I have seen that UCL and the SU did indeed facilitate a thriving student media atmosphere in years past. The university used to grant a great amount of specific funding to its student publications as a means of fostering high-quality reporting on everything from SU affairs to sports and social activities going on in ‘the College’. If one looks at old issues of Pi, which were fortnightly and full of editorial variety, such a point is evident.
The failure of the university and SU to invest in our community in recent years has led to a fall in the capabilities of societies to continuously supply the wider student community with relevant and interesting news and content. The price of printing, the lack of cross-society communication and the general fiscal incapacity of our community to perform our very important role, that of reporting on university and cultural affairs, is what I seek to fix if elected as your student media representative.
Whilst I do come from a Cheese Grater background, having served on the editorial board since my first year and as editor-in-chief last year, I want all of our student publications to thrive as I have stated in writing before (CG 86).
I am of the belief that the diversity of our student media community is an unparalleled strength that facilitates a great level of journalistic fervour, acting as a prelude to the journalistic world beyond Bloomsbury.
On this point, I will do all in my power to facilitate greater cross-society events, run by the SU, which invite external speakers from top publications (be this culture journals, newspapers, music magazines etc.) to give insights regarding what life in the world of media is really like alongside training opportunities for future journalists. Similar initiatives are already in place within both TeamUCL and other parts of ArtsUCL, so why can’t we have the same?
To achieve this goal, I will pull on my pre-established connections in the world of media made during my time as a skateboarding journalist for the national cultural magazines The Skateboarders Companion and Vague (not to be confused with Vogue) alongside my time spent with members of various political and journalistic societies across the UK. If KCL’s Roar News and Politics Society can get Alastair Campbell to speak to their media community, then I’m confident that UCL can attract even more prolific journalists from across the industry.
Moreover, I have already been working in a similar role to media representative in an unofficial capacity. Through my regular meetings with the SU’s Head of Communications Guy Stepney, UCL Special Collections’ Head of Records Colin Pleman and the GenerationUCL project leaders Georgina Brewis and Sam Blaxland, I have advocated in an informal capacity for greater benefits to be afforded to all our publications.
Indeed, I have advocated for the proliferation of Evening Standard style “bins” for our community to put our publications into and for a complete reform to the convoluted printing grant system in place at current.
If elected, I would make sure that printing prices come down for all societies by bringing the printing process in-house and securing funding for subsidised printing.
Anyone who knows me will be able to attest that I care about nothing more than the UCL student media community. I’m sure that my pub and cafe ramblings about the state of student media and how to improve it are probably starting to annoy my friends. I call the media office my second home for a reason, and as evidenced by my ArtsUCL Colours award, I have done, and will continue to do, all in my power to get our community’s interests seen to.
As stated, our democracy and wider student experience rely on a thriving student media community and, if I am privileged enough to secure your vote, I will do all in my power to promote your interests as a means of reversing the backsliding of recent years.
Robert Delaney
If you are a member of any student media society, you can vote for our next Societies Rep for Student Media by following this link between Monday 21 to Friday 25.
This article featured in the Digestive – Rep Election Special
