Parting gift
LAZY SABBS will be much easier to sack under new measures introduced by the outgoing welfare sabb.
Welfare and Community Officer Rachel Lim, who narrowly lost her re-election by just 57 votes in March, sealed her legacy with a package of accountability measures aimed at keeping her successors on their toes.
From September, each of the Union’s six sabbatical officers will be expected to present a report to their designated Policy Zone on what exactly they have been up to since the last meeting, subject to the approval of voting reps. A sabb officer who has had three reports rejected by their Zone will face scrutiny at Union Executive, which has the power to trigger no-confidence proceedings.
Lim said: “This would put a lot more power into student hands… I think it’s rare for a job to have no consequences for doing nothing.”
Sabbatical officers are paid £33,000 a year to lead and represent the Students’ Union but Lim admitted existing accountability structures offer little information on what they do on a day-to-day basis.
Less than half of UCL students had an opinion about the Union’s political leadership, polling by The Cheese Grater revealed in March, while just 7% of voters had their say in the six sabbatical positions, highlighting the scale of the Union’s crisis of indifference.
Only time will tell if greater transparency of our political leaders will yield more trust in our democracy or more scandals on these pages.
THE WELFARE sabb also managed to kind of fulfill her manifesto promise to build “sleeping pods” with the unveiling of the “Quiet Space”, a dark basement room with bean bags.
Room B32 at 26 Gordon Square was designated as the Union-mandated relaxation zone, consisting of bean bag chairs rather than any actual furniture due to UCL fire safety regulations.
Successive sabbs at UCL have proposed or trialed some form of sleeping pods in the last ten years, but all failed to get past major safety, privacy, and logistical hurdles. Do you pay someone to watch students sleep, or do you let anarchy reign?
Lim has notably moved away from her predecessor’s decision to call the room a “Napping Zone” following criticism from students that it promotes unhealthy sleeping habits.
But one student said of the new space: “That’s so woke… UCL students are already quite bad with their work-life balance, this is the last thing we need.”
Sleeping pods first featured in UCL’s campus discourse in 2014 when a proposal suggested implementing 125 sleeping pods at the cost of £1m. Subsequently, two pilots had gone ahead in 2019 and 2022, as well as one attempt at a pilot in 2023.
Where's Shaban?
FOR ONE last time in his sabb career, the education officer has missed a major event on the student calendar.
The outgoing Education Sabb Shaban Chaudhaury was notably absent from all four of the Union’s awards ceremonies that took place in late May, where the entire sabbatical leadership apart from him made an appearance to present various awards.
Camera-shy Shaban previously refused to appear on the Union’s social media channels for almost an entire year on “personal grounds” and insisted he was not responsible for low attendance at the Policy Zone of which he is chair.
Rather, the two-term education officer told Zone reps in March that Thursdays, the cost of living, and “gloomy weather” were to blame, in the year that the Education Zone repeatedly struggled to meet quorum under his watch.
Chaudhary told reps at the time: “Because of timetabling issues, Thursday is one of the busiest days where a lot of timetabling is now shifting beyond working hours.”
The education officer has also been accused by his own colleagues for deliberately gatekeeping information from the wider team so that he would be the only point of contact with University officials. Multiple sources have admitted no one knew what he was doing at any given moment.
In March, the education officer joined a UCL delegation to visit the University of Sydney, where UCL Provost Michael Spence was previously in charge between 2008-2020.
But sources say Chaudhary failed to mention anything about this trip until after everything had been decided.
Upon his return, Chaudhary spoke of Sydney’s welcome fair as “mind-bogglingly different” from UCL’s, adding the Provost had told him about it a “bazillion times”, but struggled to explain how the trip was within his remit as education officer.
The drone question
AFTER A temporary suspension over a legally contentious drone donation to Ukrainian forces, the Union has unbanned the Ukrainian Society, punishing its committee with compulsory training.
However, the Charity Commission insisted its regulatory compliance case into UCL Union was “ongoing”, as the Union may still have inadvertently acted outside of its charitable objectives.
Earlier this year, the Ukrainian Society was investigated by the Union after its committee purchased a £1,500 DJI Mavic drone and donated it to a Ukrainian soldier they personally knew, using money raised from a society event.
The charity regulator previously declared: “Providing aid or military supplies to any foreign armed force is not a charitable purpose, and no charity can legally undertake such activity.”
Researchers at Geneva’s Small Arms Survey told The Cheese Grater that despite an ongoing “definitional debate” over the precise legal status of first-person view (FPV) drones, it is generally accepted that they are considered a “light weapon”.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 117 drones were used in its recent ambush on Russian airbases that damaged 41 warplanes, including a number of nuclear-capable bombers.
Researchers also say they have seen an increase in FPV drones used by local resistance groups in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
A charity source said drone donations may be widespread across UK charities as fundraisers for Ukraine often end up being used to fund drones, with or without the charity’s knowledge.
A Union spokesperson confirmed that the Ukrainian Society had been issued a formal written warning following the outcome of a disciplinary hearing, where “a number of measures have been put in place to ensure full compliance with our policies and charity law”, including mandatory training for the present and incoming committee.
“Our actions have been guided by a commitment to helping our student groups protect themselves and the wider community from risk, proportionality, and our responsibilities as a registered charity.
“We remain dedicated to supporting Ukrainian students and continue to value the important role all student-led societies play in our community.”
Good riddance
THE UNION is set to cease banking with Barclays following major outcry from students this year.
Preparations are being made for the Union to move its current account from Barclays to Lloyds Bank on the advice of two private consultancies.
This marks the second time the Union has stopped banking with Barclays, the last time being in 2021/22 when a policy was passed calling for more ethical banking arrangements.
The British bank was named the largest funder of oil and gas in Europe for eight years running, having invested a total of $235bn (£187bn) in the likes of Shell and ExxonMobil between 2016 and 2023.
In Janurary, The Cheese Grater revealed how the Union switched back to Barclays almost as soon as its policy on ethical banking expired, prompted by a share price panic at Metro Bank in late 2023 (CG 89).
Students reacted angrily to the news, with several going on to run for officer positions at the Union elections, pledging to cut ties with Barclays.
The Union declined to comment on the latest developments. A spokesperson previously told The Cheese Grater: “We are strongly committed to ethical operations and investments, leading the way in the sector on sustainability for Students’ Unions including leading a national programme of work to decarbonise students’ union supply chains.”
It's Ben's world
THE PRESIDENT-elect of the Students’ Union is rebranding from the funny Graters guy to a serious sabbatical officer.
In a heartfelt finale, Ben Scanlan told crowds at his final Graters appearance last week: “I’ve been part of this group since 2021 when we had to wear Covid masks.
“I’ve written a lot of sketches, and I’ve created a lot of characters. They were funny to me, and I thought that it would be funny to kill all of them in one last sketch to signify I am now an adult with a job, and not someone who talks about poo on stage.
“But then I thought, that’s really stupid, because poo is actually quite funny.”
Huge crowds gathered at the Albany last Tuesday for The End of the World as We Know It, a sketch comedy show featuring some of Scanlan’s best characters over the years.
The Graters sketch director won his bid to become the next president of the Students’ Union in March on a pledge to “Make UCL cheap again”.
Scanlan accepted he faces an uphill battle to deliver lower prices at Union bars given a tight budget, but insisted: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I have a massive will.”
Naming contest
THE UNION has come to the shocking realisation that “Zones” may be a terrible name for its primary democratic organ.
The Union’s three Policy Zones, Activities, Education, and Welfare, form the basis of student democracy at UCL. Yet the very people who attend these meetings have now told the Union that the name basically makes no sense to anyone.
One Union staffer admitted: “As a new staff member, when I first heard about the ‘Activities Zone’, I was confused as f**k.”
Welfare Sabb Rachel Lim said: “You don’t know if ‘Activities Zone’ is a game of dodgeball.”
Media rep and Cheese Grater editor Robert Delaney added that students have “no idea what Zones mean [because] it doesn’t sound like anything.”
The Union unhelpfully describe Zones as “a group of students who meet regularly and discuss student issues and ideas on related topics.” Most SUs in Britain name their meetings “Council”, “Senate”, or “Assembly”, Union research shows.
But disruptive thinkers in the room, Arts Officer-elect Ben Francis and Postgrad Sabb Darcy Lan (inset), came up with groundbreaking suggestions, including “Space” and “Sounding Board”, both of which were quickly shot down by more sensible members, who finally settled on “Forum”, which they say better reflected the deliberative nature of the meetings. Boring!
Graphics by Jasmine Yiu
This article appeared in CG92
