It’s been stalking me for three years, lurking in the shadows, and I have finally succumbed to its pungent stench. So why now?
Was it watching an inebriated friend cup his ears in triumph and ‘aura farm’ after The Cheese Grater’s sister publication, Women’s Wrongs, won Best Specialist Publication at the 2025 Student Publication Association Conference?
Or even further back, my conversation with the former editor-in-chief in a pub shortly before my year abroad in the States? I left for Austin, Texas more clued up on Barnet F.C. and Church Road, but also marked by his enthusiasm for The Cheese Grater.
Whilst these colourful vignettes both spring to mind, I think the sudden infection stems from something a bit deeper: the accumulation of all my student life and university publication experience since I first walked through the Portico gates in 2022.
When I go back to my first year, I not only reminisce about the significantly cheaper Students’ Union bar prices, but also ruminate over the UCU industrial action as the majority of my lecturers went on strike to protest against job insecurity.
As a wide-eyed 18-year-old kid, I marched with my department to King’s Cross and attended organised teachouts, simply absorbing it all and asking lots of questions to those involved. I felt closer to my lecturers as they stood in front of the entrance to 51 Gordon Square, our picket line, reading extracts from texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
At the time, being informed about student issues felt enough. In my second year, I took a part-time role as a Union Outlet Survey Collector, where I was tasked to relay student feedback to those with the power to improve our university experience. However, during my shifts, I often found myself sitting in the Huntley or Phineas at 6pm, twiddling my thumbs, questioning how meaningful my work really was.
Yet, I continued to ignore The Cheese Grater’s whiff, opting for the rosy aroma of the UCL Film & TV Society Journal instead. Speaking on podcasts about my love for film and writing at Raindance Film Festival were brilliant introductions to student media, but again, it missed something: the meetings were sporadic, and it felt like we were all showing off our niches rather than collaborating on a worthwhile project. With the vanguards of the journal deeply submerged in their dissertations, an idea for a newspaper never materialised.
Discouraged by my experience of the student media landscape in London, it was my time in Austin which cemented a passion for proper journalism. Within a scorching urban desert of Cybertrucks, fraternities, and the cancerous growth of big tech, pursuing the truth felt like walking through a sandstorm.
I vividly remember the day that Donald Trump was elected for his second term. The walk to campus was eerily quiet and the dread amongst the majority of students palpable. One of my History professors was particularly downbeat as he delivered a lecture about American exceptionalism, encouraging those in visible despair to be brave.
Whilst students peacefully protesting Israel’s treatment of innocent Palestinians in Gaza were pepper-sprayed by state troopers, far-right groups infiltrated the university campus undeterred, spreading fascist propaganda to college students under the pretence of balanced debate. My heart sank as I saw children, taken out of school and no older than ten, raise signs spewing pure hatred that condemned homosexuals to hell and compared all cases of abortion to the Holocaust, a genocide which took the lives of over six million Jews, including my own great-grandfather.
As autocracy slashes the healthcare and other essential needs of America’s poorest, the free press and journalists who hold the system accountable also find themselves under siege. Trump’s administration has cut over $1 billion in public broadcasting funds to NPR and PBS, stations that provide invaluable educational content and news to vulnerable communities across the nation.
And so I return to London for my final year at UCL, not only determined to take a more active role in student publications, but also emboldened by my experience abroad which highlighted the unequivocal importance of real journalism.
If now is not the right time to write for The Cheese Grater, then when will be?
It’s time to take the pegs off our noses, to embrace the investigative stench, and grate more truth, no matter how mouldy, back into student journalism!
This article appeared in CG93
