THE AGM this year was due to be one of the most vital for some time – motions included a call for UCL to drop their arms investments, a redefinition of anti-discrimination rules to ensure fairness to all those who might suffer from anti-Semitism (including Muslims), and a series of proposals which would revolutionise the way our Union is run. Yet not a single one of these issues was discussed, all due to the disgruntled actions of one student.
Having braved snow and ice in order that their voices might be heard, over one hundred students sat and listened for 80 minutes as point after point was raised as to how the roles of the Union’s Full Time and Part Time Executive Officers should work together. The debate was heated but necessary and eventually a move to a vote was made. Exhausted by the tension of the discussion, the many present prepared to raise their voting slips to decide the matter, but were scuppered at the very last moment by Benjamin Lu, an Economics student, who smugly called quorum.
Disequilibrium
It should be noted that UCL Union AGMs rarely consist of the required 193 students and this unfortunate situation makes it possible for anyone to derail the meeting should it seem that things aren’t going how they’d wish. Having turned up over an hour late in the midst of a discussion about a motion that he appeared to have little interest in, it appeared that Lu simply decided that he didn’t want the AGM to take place. Was he proarms investment, pro-Sabby, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic or did he have another axe to grind?
Chairman Lu
Quite so; Benny Lu was at the centre of a copyright scandal involving Equilibrium, the Economics Society magazine, late last year. After having volunteered to help with Equilibrium, the magazine’s designer was subsequently ejected from the society’s board due to a disagreement. Lu, then Economics Society President went ahead and published the magazine, without including the designer’s name. Rightly, the designer took this matter to the Union’s Activities Board which ruled in his favour and the Economics Society was duly punished for plagiarism.
Benny Lu still remains at the head of the society, albeit as ‘Chairman’, a role in which he is not properly accountable to UCL Union. Lu apparently remains embittered by the affair, and it seems that he called quorum at the AGM in order to spite those who had brought him to justice. One view overheard upstairs at the Sabbatical Suite the following day was that ‘if you call quorum, you kill democracy’ – maybe that’s just what Chairman Lu intends to do.
ADDENDUM: LAST ISSUE (CG 12) in ‘Embittered Economist ruins AGM’, we wrote that Benjamin Lu was President of the Economics and Finance Society when a dispute took place over the design of Equilibrium magazine. In fact, the President at the time was Dasha Kuznetsova. Further to this correction, we would like to clarify that Benjamin Lu did not make the final decision to eject the designer of Equilibrium although we maintain that he was still involved in the dispute. MR