By way of introducing readers to the new sabbatical leadership at the Students’ Union, The Cheese Grater has taken the great risk of pissing off the entire sabb team with a personalised introduction for each officer.
We hope that the officers named will not be too terribly offended, for there is much more to come in what is going to be a long year ahead. As always, officers are welcome to respond to our well-intentioned words of endearment by writing a letter to our editors at editor@cheesegratermagazine.org.
Nick Miao, Co-Editor-in-Chief
President pledges status quo
Union President Goksu Danaci has put status quo on the menu as she pledges to continue doing everything the Union currently does.
Her manifesto commitments include prioritising a new Union building, of which talks have been underway for most of the past year under former President Mary McHarg; advocating for students, which is in her job description; liaising with UCL, which is her in her job description; offer cheap and healthy food options, which is something the Union currently does; place sustainability at the forefront, which is something the Union currently does; and engage with other SUs, which is something the Union currently does.
Goksu appears to have taken her campaign slogan ‘Building the ideal of UCL of tomorrow today’ in quite a literal sense.
Under the radar
Education Officer Shaban Chaudhary is the only surviving officer from last year’s sabb team, presumably because the role is so boring that nobody has bothered to scrutinise his work. He’s certainly used that to his advantage.
Between his very important but also very boring work on assessments and feedback and, er, all the rest of it, nobody seems to have noticed that Shaban and the Union’s top bureaucrats had signed off on the decision to switch back to Barclays Bank – having closed its account in 2021 over climate concerns – in his capacity as Chair of the Trustee Board Finance Committee last November.
The Cheese Grater will try harder to pay closer attention to Shaban’s work but implores the Officer to make his role more interesting when he is not busy getting the Union to reinvest in the world’s biggest oil and gas fan club.
Limbo challenge
Ex-Cheerleading Club Treasurer Anastasija Boikova emerged as the new Activities and Engagement Officer following the shock resignation of her predecessor last June.
Anastasija ran as the only candidate with a sports background and came second in last year’s leadership race. Accordingly, her manifesto says little to nothing about the arts and student media, so readers can expect to see the next issue of The Cheese Grater only online because chances are we will not have money to print again.
Luckily for the new Activities Officer, her predecessor was probably one of the worst sabbs UCL had seen in many years. The bar is a tripping hazard in hell, so unless they teach you how to limbo at Cheerleading Club, Anastasija will find it quite difficult to do even worse. Let’s hope she doesn’t take this as a challenge!
Curse of the sleeping pods
Welfare and Community Officer Rachel Lim is set to carry on UCL’s longstanding tradition of sabbatical officers pledging to build sleeping pods on campus.
Successive sabbatical officers have been obsessed with sleeping pods over the last decade. There was a proposal in 2014, a pilot in 2019, another pilot in 2022, and a failed pilot last year under Activities and Engagement Officer Aria Shi, who at the time defended her record by blaming UCL for ‘not giving us the space for it’ (CG 87). 2024 would also mark three years in a row where at least one sabbatical officer has pledged to build sleeping pods during their election campaign.
When asked what she would do differently than her predecessors to convince UCL that this isn’t just another gimmick policy, Rachel said, ‘Making sure students are getting enough sleep is still a major welfare concern and something we want to help improve… I will be ensuring our projects are considered alongside their priorities by working closely with UCL throughout my tenure.’ Only time will tell if Rachel breaks the curse of the sleeping pods…
Moving mountains
One of Equity and Inclusion Officer Eda Yildirimkaya’s manifesto pledges is to check for ‘accessibility measures’ in all buildings and to make ‘arrangements in students’ timetables accordingly’.
Unfortunately, accessibility and timetabling are the two things that UCL has never really figured out. The University seems to be more concerned with fancy new builds like UCL East than refurbishing existing sites that remain inaccessible to wheelchair users (CG passim), while timetable clashes and other IT-related cockups are a near-universal experience that has happened almost every year without fail.
Eda will basically have to move not one, but two mountains if she is to deliver on this manifesto pledge. But hey, that’s what she gets paid for. The Cheese Grater wishes her the best of luck in this endeavour. She will need it!
Apathy Party wins again
In a sign of a thriving student democracy, Postgraduate Officer Darcy Lan was elected with a whopping 742 votes.
Despite having the largest postgraduate student body of any UK university – 25,937 as of 2022/23 – only 2,643 postgrads voted in last year’s Leadership Race. How many of those voted for Darcy is anyone’s guess…
In any case, this means over 23,000 postgraduate students did not bother to vote at all. For visual reference, the O2 Arena has a seating capacity of 20,000 people.
With such a, er, jaw-dropping mandate behind her, Darcy must now take on the challenge to convince her Apathy Party peers (enough to literally fill a stadium) that Students’ Union UCL is not just the plaything of undergraduate children.
Graphics by Jasmine Yiu, Graphics Editor
This article appeared in CG 88