Good morning.
As an integral member of the student media community at UCL, the success of The Cheese Grater Magazine depends on our advocate within the Students’ Union, the Societies Rep for Student Media.
It is no secret that The Cheese Grater Magazine Society has its grudges with the Students’ Union. We believe that student media at UCL isn’t treated seriously by the Union (with, in fairness, some good reasons), evidenced by our tiny annual grant compared to other London student publications. Your club or society will almost certainly have its own grudges with the Union too.
The truth is that running a good student society at UCL – in particular a student publication – costs time, money, and an incredible amount of effort, and we think the Union should provide us with more support to achieve that. However annoying we may be to the adults on 25 Gordon Street, we are ultimately a society affiliated with, and therefore the responsibility of, Students’ Union UCL.
This is why this publication is taking seriously its responsibility to report on this year’s Students’ Union Rep Elections, whose importance is typically overlooked by absolutely everyone, even by student media (What the hell is Pi doing?) But it matters to us that we have a strong advocate in the Union who can effectively represent the voice of the media community. Chances are, your club or society has a rep too.
To this end, The Cheese Grater has issued this special edition of the Digestive, our (supposedly) fortnightly newsletter. Yes, we know it’s only been a week since our launch issue. Yes, a regular issue will come out next week as scheduled too, and let’s just say we’ve been busy. Unfortunately, this means our poor sabbatical officers (most of whom, I must admit, are very nice) will have to endure yet another week of media scrutiny. Sorry about that.
Additionally, we sent out a blanket invitation to all four candidates competing to be Media Rep – Altay Shaw, Robert Delaney, Maria Kliuchnikova, and serial candidate Yixiao Huang (spoilers!) – 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. That’s under Voices and just after the headlines, in the week that voting opens for the not-so-much awaited Students’ Union Rep Elections.
At least five candidates running for NUS delegate are part of a secret conspiracy to control the agenda at this year’s National Conference, writes Nick Miao.
Student apathy has reached record levels as 47 out of 75 roles up for grabs at this year’s Rep Elections are either vacant or uncontested, writes Harini Sivakumar and Nick Miao.
A candidate running for seven positions in the Rep Elections is believed to have used AI in his manifestos and switched pronouns to qualify for positive action quotas, writes Lola Davies.
On Wednesday, The Cheese Grater sent 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.
Picture of the week
Spotted in the Cloisters: Other candidates are available.