Much of the Leadership Race will be focused on populist campaigns with candidates pushing unattainable policies, but what these elected officials actually get up to is much less clear.
Once described as the “essence of College life”, the Union is central to our student experience at UCL. The Union runs an annual turnover of over £16 million, which funds its commercial outlets including the bars, cafes, and the campus shop.
The Union also runs key events across the student calendar, from the Welcome Fair to the upcoming London Varsity. It is also home to over 400 clubs and societies — including this paper — which it funds and regulates.
As well as being a provider of services, the Union also serves as an advocacy body — as its name suggests — representing the interests of UCL students at University level and beyond.
The Cheese Grater has consistently highlighted that the Union has struggled to advocate effectively. Nevertheless, the sabbatical officers regularly visit parliament to lobby MPs, such as their work with the Russell Group Students’ Union on international students.
For now it continues to be a member of the scandal-ridden National Union of Students, but that could all be over soon, with the referendum in May.
The growing importance of the Union cannot be overstated. Yet, opinion polling by The Cheese Grater suggests that most students either don’t know or don’t care about what their elected officials are up to. This article will seek to shed some light on the mysterious bureaucratic machine that is Students’ Union UCL.
Zones and Exec
One of the primary ways the Union makes decisions is through one of its three “Policy Zones”. It’s helpful to think of Zones as the lower chamber of Union democracy, with each Zone representing a different area of student life: Activities Zone for clubs and societies, Education Zone for, well, education, and Welfare and Community Zone for all-things housing and wellbeing.
Each Zone is chaired by the responsible sabbatical officer and meets about five times a year to discuss campus matters and policy proposals from the student body.
Zones are attended by voting members — typically officers and reps, elected in the October elections — as well as journalists from The Cheese Grater by virtue of the fact that no other UCL paper has bothered to turn up. While these meetings are open to all students and advertised on the website, albeit poorly, they nonetheless struggle with low turnout often because students are unaware that they exist.
Policies passed at Zones get sent to the Union Executive — the Union’s upper chamber — where it either gets ratified, at which point it becomes Union policy, or thrown back to the Zones akin to parliamentary ping-pong.
Policies made this way can take months, as seen with the Zero Food Waste policy earlier this year, but it remains a powerful bottom-up process for students to make positive and lasting change at UCL, that is, until it lapses in three years’ time.
This process is nonetheless riddled with red tape as sabbs and Union staff continue to hold significant sway over agenda-setting and policy proposals by suggesting amendments so they are aligned to the Union’s long-term strategy.
Political leadership
The Union sabbs — as readers will no doubt have read about repeatedly in this issue — are paid over £33,000 a year to determine the strategic direction of the Union. They work on priority projects loosely — and we mean, loosely — based on their manifesto pledges. Collectively, they represent the political leadership of the Union with the primary objective of improving student life at UCL.
The sabbs work closely alongside a small team of senior executives, a group of permanent staff at the Union whose job it is to advise the inexperienced elected leadership. This includes CEO John Dubber and a variety of Directors.
These senior execs keep the sabbs in check. Previously saving the Union from the verge of bankruptcy after the elected sabbs burnt an effigy of the Vice Provost, which resulted in UCL freezing the Union’s funding.
Once elected, the policies put forward by the new sabbs will be watered down to meet the Union’s financial, educational and charitable aims, often the reason why The Cheese Grater constantly reports sabbs do nothing.
Board of trustees
As is the case with any registered charity in the UK, supreme power lies with the gatekeepers of the Union, the Board of Trustees, “responsible for overall management and administration of the Students’ Union and may exercise all the powers of the Union.”
The Board consists of the six sabb officers, four elected student trustees, and three external appointed members who are often UCL alumni, staff, or affiliates. The trustees are legally required to act in the best interests of the Union, before any of their own.
This also means the Board is quite a boring place to be. While, in theory, the Board can overturn executive decisions if (say) they risk legal and financial repercussions, or are incompatible with the Union’s charitable objectives under the Education Act, this power is rarely exercised.
Indeed, in those rare instances that force them to act, it’s often to do with students expecting the Union to do or say things that are outside of their legal remits of acting in the best interests of “students as students”. Such is also the case for most students’ unions in the country under the Education Act 1994.