NUS-exit
Earlier this term, UCL students voted by a landslide margin of 87.85% to leave the National Union of Students.
3,021 students turned out to vote, with 2,631 choosing to Leave and just 364 siding with Remain, representing a record breaking margin of victory for any NUS referendum nationally.
This victory marks another nail in the coffin for the NUS, with Cambridge, LSE, Manchester, and Bath all voting to leave this year.
The Leave campaign defied expectations with fears that turnout would be low and quoracy would not be met. For context, 5% of the Union’s membership need to vote in referendums for them to be considered binding.
The Union decided to hold the referendum in early May, claiming that there wouldn’t be enough staff capacity during March’s leadership race. This sparked concerns that it would drive low turnout.
The Remain campaign also faced controversy, with no campaign lead coming forward. They instead chose to remain anonymous for the entire campaign period and wiped the instagram account as soon as the results came in.
It appears not even the Remain campaign believed in the NUS, with a member of the campaign telling The Cheese Grater, “I didn’t want my name linked to NUS, or to be seen as having the same values and beliefs as them.”
The Union has now notified the NUS of their intention to leave, and more information will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Baby steps...
After a long battle to force the Union to bank sustainably, £2 million in funds has now been moved from Barclays to Aldermore and Triodos, which the SU claims will “save more than 200 tonnes of carbon each year.”
The Union has celebrated this move as part of their attempt to be the UK’s most sustainable Students’ Union, claiming these banks are some of the most sustainable in the world.
While this is certainly a step in the right direction, the Union has come under attack from co-sustainability officer Oskar Barltrop who commented on Instagram, “the [Union] forgot to mention they still have another £4 million with Barclays and its current day to day account hasn’t moved to Triodos yet either...”
The Cheese Grater cannot confirm this figure, but when asked about it at a zone meeting, Activities Officer Ana Boikova did not deny that the figure was within that range.
When asked about the remaining funds, Boikova, who also serves as Chair of the Union Finance Committee, said, “we consulted Mothertree to give us an overview of what banks we should look at for our savings, and then for our general transactions.
“For the savings it’s a lot easier because you don’t need certain daily [services] that high street banks provide”
Boikova claimed that the remaining funds, which mostly consist of club and society money, will be moved to a different bank at a later date.
The trustee board has approved the move for the current account but no timeline has been revealed.
Deep State strikes back
Readers may remember from the election issue (CG96) that a welfare zone meeting was cancelled due to a policy calling for BDS on products within the Union bars and shops.
This policy has not since returned to a zone meeting and its future remains up in the air. Seeking answers, Sustainability Officer Oskar Barltrop raised concerns that there has been an overstep in Union staff preventing policies from reaching the zone.
This accusation was quickly shut down by Director of Policy, Governance and Advocacy Simon To, who said — “it isn’t ultimately our decision [...] our role is to advise, but ultimately it is the trustees and elected chairs [who decide]”.
The Cheese Grater heard conflicting accounts from sources, with one saying that Union staff shut down the policy, but another source saying Welfare Sabb Hana Mougharbel had been backed into a corner and had no alternative choice.
Mougharbel said, “I would like nothing more than for that policy to go forward [...] on that last day, it was told to me that it couldn’t go forward due to legal reasons.
“Even though it’s supposed to be my final say, there was no other way, I did feel uncomfortable with making that call, but there was no other call I could make”.
The Cheese Grater understands that Mougharbel postponed the zone meeting in order to consult lawyers on how to proceed with the policy.
The end of the list
Sabbs came under fire at the last executive meeting for not completing their officer reports on time.
The sabbatical officer reports are intended to showcase the work, or lack of work, they have done since their last zone meetings.
The Union Executive reviews and votes on the reports. In principle, this should be an accountability measure but in practice all reports get approved, even if the officers write a few bullet points of gibberish.
During a review of Union Democracy, sabb reports were listed as one of the ways where things have worked well. A pesky Cheese Grater journalist quickly interjected and pointed out that there have been numerous occasions where officers have not produced reports promptly.
Union President Anam Choudhary acknowledged that she has not always prioritised producing reports saying, “sometimes it’s just the end of the list [...] I know it’s wrong, it just happens.”
Welfare sabb Hana Mougharbel similarly apologised for not producing her report on time and advised incoming sabbs to seek support from the Union Democracy team, who have been “life saving”.
Choudhary goes to China
In April, Union President Anam Choudhary represented the Union at the “Young Icebreakers UK Student Union Leaders Delegation to China”.
She spent her week visiting a theme park, industrial sites, universities, and national parks.
She also spoke to Chinese high school students and the China Daily News, an English-language paper owned by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department.
All this was, according to Choudary, in aid of educating Chinese students about students’ unions in the UK.
She claimed many Chinese students do not understand or engage with the Union.
However, the Association of British and Chinese University Students and Chinese Scholars and Students Association both had turnout above 75% in this year’s Leadership Race: the second and third highest turnouts, respectively, of all cultural societies.
Upon her return, she said the Union was “trying to have” a full-time staff member for Mandarin social media engagement, to make posts on Xiaohongshu/RedNote (which the Union already has an account on) and WeChat.
She also said that she was in conversations with UCL about its payment provider, Flywire (which accepts payments by card or bank transfer). Choudhary claimed Chinese students sometimes had issues with Flywire and wanted to be able to pay with WeChat.
Choudhary also said she was talking to the Union’s commercial teams about ‘WeChat Pay’ in the Union bars, cafés, and shops.
The Cheese Grater understands that the trip was paid for by the event organisers, but Choudhary was paid her usual salary while in China.
None Of Your Business?
The Activities and Engagement and Equity and Inclusion sabbs, Ana Boikova and Eda Yildirimkaya, put on a show as part of the artsUCL Fringe, parodying the activities zone.
It had numerous setbacks: firstly, they struggled to get anyone to audition, with them begging people to act for them in zone meetings and Ana even using one of her weekly emails to ask for actors.
By the time they realised it was unworkable, it was too late to cancel and so the lacklustre script was mostly binned, with the show becoming almost entirely improvised. Yildirimkaya and Boikova eventually managed to convince a handful of officers and reps to act for them.
The problems did not end there. Stage Crew Society, who crew most student shows in the Bloomsbury Theatre and Studio, as well as most artsUCL Fringe shows, walked out when the tech rehearsal went unattended, with a stage crew member left to wait in the Bloomsbury Studio for two hours with no information.
Before the second performance, on 10 June at 12:30 pm, a cast member downed two BuzzBallz (a blatant violation of theatre policy) in view of front-of-house staff, as well as posting it on the show’s Instagram story. This led to a stern telling-off and the carrying out of a “dynamic risk assessment”.
As for the show itself, it was reasonably well received by the audience of Union staff, officers, and reps, despite being half the advertised length and not advertised as improv.
The first five minutes was composed of Jeff Saddington-Wiltshire, the Union’s Democracy & Representation Manager, reading out each character’s description as they entered — a slow and awkward introduction.
What followed was 25 minutes of unfunny jokes being beaten to death: expect a full review shortly.
Out with the old, in with the new
There was record turnout at this year’s Union elections with just under 32% of students turning out to vote — a 5% improvement on last year.
The Sabbatical Officers — the six full-time paid roles in the Union — for 2026/27 will be Christian Chambers as President, Audrey Lau as Activities & Engagement Officer, Sarah Jilani as Education Officer, Vivian Li as Welfare & Community Officer, Rawleka Wilson as Equity & Inclusion Officer, and Anam Choudary as Postgraduate Officer.
Chambers, Societies Rep and president of RaiseUCL, won the presidential race against eight other candidates.
Chambers defeated Sustainability Officer Oskar Barltrop in the seventh round, with 2,348 votes to Barltrop’s 2,100 votes.
Chambers won with the largest number of votes in Union President history, over a thousand more than Ben Scanlan last year. He narrowly misses Activities Officer Ana Boikova’s record 2,379 votes from last year.
Howver, Union records show that Chambers has been absent from every activities zone this academic year despite being a sitting member as societies rep.
Audrey Lau, president of Drama Society, won Activities & Engagement Officer against seven other candidates, with a turnout of 5,903.
Rawleka Wilson won Equity & Inclusion Officer, beating five other candidates on a turnout of 2,820 votes.
Wilson has held various Union positions for four years.
She says she will implement budgeting and fundraising initiatives, greater transparency in decisions, and more accessible language surrounding the Students’ Union.
The Sitting Sabbs
Sarah Jilani was re-elected as Education Officer, beating five other candidates in a landslide with 53.4% of the first-preference votes, on a turnout of 3,285 votes.
She is the only incumbent sabb to successfully win re-election in the same position.
Anam Choudhary, current President, passed over running for a second term in favour of running for Postgraduate Officer, beating 11 other candidates on a turnout of 4,021.
Much of her presidential attention has been focused on postgrad issues, so it may be the case that her new job title is simply more reflective of her policies.
In the tighest race of the night, incumbent Welfare and Community Officer Hana Mourgharbel was defeated by Vivian Li, with Li winning by just six votes.
Interestingly, the Welfare & Community race was also the narrowest race last year, with Mourgharbel defeating incumbent Rachel Lim by 57 votes. What goes around comes around...
Li ran on affordability, promising £2 campus drinks day (although how frequent this would be is not mentioned), free tailoring, and more.
She claims to be an “expert negotiator” with “foreign trade experience” and notes her Myers-Briggs personality type as ESFJ.