One of the strangest places I have been during my first term at UCL has been the Student Centre.
There is the real corpse of the glorious Jeremy Bentham, preserved and displayed similarly to what Soviet Russia did to Lenin’s body. Glued to the same chair for the last 16 hours are the zombies of students that have “locked in” all night, smelling of cheese and onion crisps (that might not be Walker’s fault, rather the consequence of spending a night at the Student Centre). On the flip side, there are also students having heated debates about sexual liberty and how OnlyFans might be leading to the demise of female autonomy.
The Student Centre is not the library; it lacks that light academia aesthetic that aspiring university students romanticise when thinking about taking the step into higher education. So, when I feel like mustering up the courage to read a 50-page journal on historiography, but also don’t want to feel guilty about checking my phone when I need a break from the drier readings involved in my degree, I opt for the Student Centre. It’s a liminal space that attracts all types of students: the academics, the gossips, the panickers, the societies doing 24-hour challenges.
Despite the corpse, mysterious smells, tailgaters, and jarring conversations all held in the Centre, this is not the weirdest part of the building.
Written on the steps that lead to the first floor is UCL’s acknowledgement of its ties with eugenics and Karl Pearson. A Cambridge mathematician who studied law at UCL, Pearson attained the post of Goldsmid Chair of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics in 1884.
Though these academic accolades make Pearson appear an impressive alumnus, he was effectively the successor to Francis Galton, the father of eugenics, by being the first Chair of Eugenics in the University of London. Galton and Pearson, facilitated by the UCL faculties of Statistics and Biometry, assisted the formation of the eugenics theory that validated the Nazi Party’s aim for a “super-race”.
I appreciate that the University had to make a statement about their associations with the ideology, especially after the 2018 London Conference of Intelligence hosted by UCL students.
Silence is dangerous.
By not confronting this disturbing ideology, the University would effectively be saying that Pearson’s work was fine. It is obvious that UCL have invested a lot into confronting this uncomfortable legacy. Not only from the refurbishments of the Student Centre, but also through ‘Prejudice in Power’ talks.
It is somewhat unavoidable that a university with a long history will have links to problematic and controversial figures of the past. Just look at the University of Edinburgh’s recent reports on the financial support they got from beneficiaries of the transatlantic slave trade.
Ignoring such ties would appear as if the University did not care about the consequences that the ideology had in the twentieth century, and with rising right-wing extremism and the rampant spread of misinformation, it is now paramount for institutions to make their stance on eugenics clear.
Considering the 2024 EDI data report discloses that over 50% of the student body fall under the BAME umbrella — groups that eugenicists actively framed as inferior — I do believe that the university should be more sensitive in how they approach this topic.
Personally, being mixed-race and having two ongoing health conditions, I would rather not be confronted with the concept of eugenics when I need a break from my readings.
UCL cannot, and should not, erase their ties. I appreciate that it is impossible to perfectly approach a topic that could be personally triggering for a majority of the student body.
The design team for the Student Centre certainly did not intend for students to now say, “let’s meet at the eugenics stairs”. Though the staircase covers how the University is confronting this darker legacy, the word eugenics sticks out like a sore thumb.
Are students stressing about meeting deadlines and writing essays really that likely to read the word eugenics and think, “Oh, let me read the rest of that staircase instead of doing my essay?”
Promote the talks, put up posters addressing this issue in the Student Centre, IOE, and cafés. I am not proposing to scrap the work UCL is doing to build a more inclusive environment.
All I am saying is students chatting about nights out at Scala on steps that have eugenics plastered on them is… quite uncomfortable.
