Go around campus and ask students the following questions: Who are UCL’s 6 Sabbatical Officers? Who are your Academic Reps? What is the Activities Zone? You will find very few people who can answer all these questions flawlessly. With student elections coming up, a variety of issues are going to be put on the table and students will cast their votes for people stepping up to change them. Yet only a fraction of UCL’s student body is going to vote in this year’s leadership race. If the stats from every previous SU election are to be believed, UCL has a real culture of indifference when it comes to who is getting positions outside of societies and sports clubs.
There are a few things that can explain this: First of all, a lot of people come to UCL to be in London, not just for the university. Being integrated into the UK’s biggest city comes with a lot of extra baggage when compared to a campus university where student life is confined to an incredibly small place. Despite being one of the oldest universities in the UK, it lacks a lot of the quirks and culture that you find in places like Oxford or St. Andrews. This reflects both the city itself and the incredibly large & diverse student body which attends the university, half of which is postgraduate.
Students who study for a 1-year master’s or have their heads down doing a PhD don’t quite have the same free time or enthusiasm to throw themselves into student life & politics like undergraduates do. That is not say they do not care about where they are studying. In fact, the UCL brand can go a long way once you’ve graduated, and that brings me on to my next point.
UCL has a large focus on careers, both as an institution and amongst its student body. It’s an individual pursuit that causes you to think less about where you are now, but where you’re going to be once you graduate. Those people who are not reading about what’s happening on campus are busy rewriting their CVs or out at work trying to make rent. You then end up with a situation where student politics falls very far down on people’s agendas. The university then sees this and tries to provide more of what it believes students want, that being career insights, internship opportunities, and the whole place has turned into a sort of graduate factory. It is no secret either that the universities’ leadership is very business-oriented, creating a scenario that is perfect for cultural stagnation and little internal change.
This is not to detract from the people who do care and try their hardest to make things happen – look at all the Palestine protests – but writing an angry opinion piece branding the SU a dictatorship is not exactly going to turn heads when you have these fundamental issues with creating practical, real changes. What I am trying to demonstrate here is that anyone who has a problem with the style of leadership and corporate nature of UCL needs to understand that the student body enables that culture. A lack of engagement with established processes and sustained pressure for change is a collective responsibility, and one that cannot really be held to account.
Staff-Student consultation is almost entirely a token act. Academic Rep meetings rarely have 100% attendance at all levels: a body that allows both staff and students to sit together and have active discussions about the issues facing students. The universities’ networks are also highly underutilised, an offensive but ultimately true statement to the people who represent these groups. The question of how, or even if it is possible to get students to engage with these things is a discussion that needs to be had beyond just this article. The precise problem is a lack of conversation, a lack of education, and that itself breeds a lack of understanding.
It should also be said that there is a simultaneous lack of enthusiasm from various faculties and departments to engage with the processes. I am not here to write a pass for every dismissive email or act of hand-waving done by the departments and faculties of UCL. There are plenty of stories available which highlight how uncompromising the university can be. Yet finger-pointing and the identifying of issues is only the first step. We don’t just need protestors, we need more reps, we need leaders in conversation both outside and inside of established processes. When pressure is applied from multiple angles it is far more effective and forces people to listen.
I hope that what I am saying here is not interpreted as a defence of the system as it is. I have no stake in UCL beyond the degree it gives me and the money I give it. It is not perfect, but it has not reached its full potential either. So don’t ignore your emails from the Sabbs, read what your department and your faculty is up to, talk to your reps. I guarantee you there is a conversation to be had in every classroom. Without that, UCL will always have an indifferent, silent majority of students, leaving real issues on the fringes of the student experience. If your professors won’t listen, go higher, make that complaint. Don’t be worried about looking like a troublemaker and don’t tell me that you “can’t be arsed”. Nothing will happen otherwise. If we are all only worried about the degree at the end there will always be problems that go unnoticed.
