The Union elections have concluded with an interesting set of results that could mean radical changes to student life at UCL in the coming year.
Leading your Students’ Union next year will be a team of six full-time sabbatical officers. These are, Ben Scanlan as Union President, Ana Boikova as Activities & Engagement Officer, Sarah Jilani as Education Officer, Eda Yildirimkaya as Equity & Inclusion Officer, Darcy Lan as Postgraduate Officer and Hana Mougharbel as Welfare & Community Officer.
These officers are paid £33,000 a year – plus holiday and company benefits – to represent the interests of UCL students at University and national level. Collectively, they determine the political direction of Students’ Union UCL.
Some 13,500 students – 27% of UCL’s student population – took part in this year’s Leadership Race, marking the highest-ever turnout and retaining UCL Union’s record of having held the largest student election in the UK for the fourth year in a row.
Now’s a good time as any to get to know the new sabbs and find out what they intend to do once they take office this June.
Can President Scanlan afford to ‘Make UCL cheap again’?
Fourth-year History student and Graters Sketch Director Ben Scanlan has won the race to be Union President on a platform to “Make UCL Cheap Again”.
Scanlan has pledged to slash prices on “as many things as possible” across UCL’s commercial outlets, expand the Union hardship grant, and be a more vocal advocate for students nationally.
In his speech at the results ceremony, the President-elect said: “This is a massive honour that the community of students here at UCL have put their trust in me to be the president of the Students’ Union.
“The fight has just begun… Let’s make UCL cheap again!”
A fight is certainly headed Scanlan’s way. The Union’s finances, while better than they used to be, remain strained and highly dependent on funding from the University.
He also faces challenges from within: despite the title, the Union President has no more authority than the five other sabb officers, each of whom will presumably have different ideas of where the money should be spent.
In an exclusive on-air interview with The Cheese Grater, Scanlan admitted: “There is a bit of a problem and I’m going to be so real with everybody, it could be a bit of an issue.
“In life, everyone has to make concessions… [but] I’m going to make as few concessions as I possibly can. I’m going to push everything I possibly can through.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And I have a massive will.”
Notably, this is not Scanlan’s first attempt at the presidency. In 2023, Scanlan ran a mildly successful joke campaign posed as a garden gnome and almost beat the incumbent officer with 436 votes.
Easy win for Activities Officer
Activities and Engagement Officer Ana Boikova secured her re-election with an astonishing landslide victory, winning in the first round with a record 2,379 votes.
The race was widely considered the most predictable of the elections, with just two other candidates contesting the incumbent officer, neither of whom put up much of a fight.
Boikova, without much to do in her race, managed to get embroiled in a public spat concerning a different race. Boikova got into a disagreement with Equity and Inclusion hopeful, Amanda Ng, with the incumbent officer defending her close friend Eda Yildirimkaya after the latter was attacked on her record throughout the campaign.
The Activities Officer now holds the record of having received the most votes in any Union election, beating the previous record-holder Vaania Kapoor, who gained 2,150 votes as the only candidate for Welfare and Community Officer in 2023 but never took office for family reasons. She now works at a kombucha start-up company.
With a strong mandate behind her, the pressure is on Boikova to deliver on her pledges, which include increasing funding for clubs and societies, creating “distinct spaces” for activities at UCL, and breaking down barriers to engagement.
Equity drama changes nothing
In by far the most dramatic of races this year, incumbent Equity and Inclusion Officer Eda Yildirimkaya has risen above the mud-throwing to win by a convincing margin with 1,793 votes in the second round.
Throughout campaign week, Yildirimkaya was the target of electoral malpractice with some of her posters being torn down by persons unknown as well as attacks on her public record as the incumbent Equity Officer.
However, all of that drama did little to convince voters, with Yildirimkaya beating the runner-up candidate Amanda Ng by almost 700 votes.
This is despite Yildirimkaya’s rather uninspiring campaign, having pledged to deliver a “More Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive UCL” – two of those buzzwords being part of the job title.
Much of Yildirimkaya’s campaign and her first term in office were dedicated to celebrating “awareness months”, having launched the “Liberate” Gallery in Phineas in between Black History Month and Women’s History Month.
The Equity Officer also claims to have sold around 300 limited-edition cocktails at the Institute Bar to raise money for the Gender Expression Fund over LGBTQ+ History Month.
Rule breach did little to change Postgrad hearts and minds
Postgraduate Officer Darcy Lan has won her second term in office with 1,648 votes, beating the runner-up candidate Student Trustee Seth Harris by over 500 votes.
Lan’s pledges include the extension of her sparsely attended “Postgraduate Career Supercharger” networking events, continued access to UCL Careers for up to three years after graduation, and other “fun events” with “free food”.
On the campaign trail, Lan was found to have breached the Union’s election rules alongside another candidate after the pair used WeChat to lobby Chinese students without providing an accurate English translation. Both candidates received a slap on the wrist from the Union democracy team, receiving only a written warning.
Indeed, the Union’s stern words did little to change the minds of Chinese voters with this year’s election seeing an unusual spike in turnout from the state-sponsored Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), which made the top ten turnout per club or society.
Nonetheless, Lan’s lead was smaller than what many had expected despite having campaigned aggressively all week. Runner-up candidate Seth Harris managed to gain over 1,100 votes doing little beyond printing an absurd number of posters.
The Cheese Grater understands that Lan has told Harris she would adopt some of his policies in her second term, which included lobbying UCL for a postgraduate tuition discount and sacking “lazy reps” who consistently fail to turn up to meetings – something President-elect Ben Scanlan has also pledged to do.
Less than 60 votes sealed fate for Welfare Officer
Welfare and Community Officer Rachel Lim narrowly lost her job to Hana Mougharbel in the closest race of all, with just 57 votes between the candidates in round seven of the final count.
Lim did not originally intend to run for re-election but was convinced to do so by the other sabbs, The Cheese Grater was told. She undoubtedly shot herself in the foot with this last-minute decision as many contenders had already put themselves forward with the expectation it would be an open race.
Despite being the only one of the four sabbs seeking re-election to have lost out on a second term, the incumbent advantage was certainly on Lim’s side, having done little to no campaigning and still gotten so close to winning.
Lim’s successor, Hana Mougharbel, has pledged better conditions in halls, a nine-minute grace period after assessment deadlines, prayer rooms in every UCL building, divestment from arms companies, and air conditioning in B/1 of the Student Centre.
But Mougharbel faces an uphill battle in each of these pledges as they all relate to the University, not the Union. This means while she can lobby the suits at UCL all she likes, they are under no obligation to help her fulfil these manifesto pledges.
Meanwhile, her other commitments to deliver “free food” breakfast clubs and Gym discounts for Access students may clash with President-elect Ben Scanlan’s plans to cut Union spending to deliver cheaper prices across its commercial outlets.
Last person standing in Education race
With 1,240 votes, Sarah Jilani was crowned the next Education Officer, beating 12 other candidates in round 13 of the final count.
This year’s Education race was the most competitive ever, with 13 hopefuls putting themselves forward for the role.
Jilani nonetheless managed to come 400 votes ahead of the runner-up candidate, Student Trustee Angela Brown, standing out of the crowd with a bold pledge to cut ties with “entities breaching UCL’s own ethical policies”. It’s not entirely clear whether she meant the University or the Union – which are legally and operationally separate – should be the one cutting ties.
The Officer-elect has also pledged to deliver earlier exam timetable releases, an option to type at assessment centres to cut exam anxiety, more study spaces, and closing feedback loops within departments.
Like Welfare Officer-elect Hana Mougharbel, Jilani may quickly find herself up against a brick wall as most of her manifesto pledges concern areas of the University where she does not have direct control as a Union officer.
She will succeed two-term Education Officer Shaban Chaudhary, who previously refused to appear on Union social media for almost the entirety of his second term and was even accused of withholding information from his own colleagues.
