Nick Miao Co-Editor-in-Chief
NEW SABBS IN FOCUS
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.
l See the Mailsack on p10
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 vanity project, 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 they pay you 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.
RETURN OF THE SITH
THE UCL Conservative Society has returned to campus after the Students’ Union was reportedly satisfied that the Tories have fulfilled the recommendations of the disciplinary panel.
For those who don’t remember, the UCL Tories had been on suspension since January for being a little bit too fascist when they decided to host a joint ‘port and policy’ event with their much wealthier comrades down at Strand Polytechnic (King’s). The event is what it says on the tin: public school boys drinking fortified wine on university premises, debating totally normal ‘policies’ such as ‘This house would sink the [migrant] boats’ and ‘This house would invade Yemen’ (CG 86).
Previously, the UCL Tories had gotten away with doing a similar joint event with Strand Poly where they entertained a debate to ‘reinstate the British Empire’.
Of course, in a university where fascism is legal and ‘cancel culture’ is frowned upon by the President and Provost Michael Spence, who insists that the woke left establishment (us) should learn to ‘disagree well’ with objectively evil people, the real reason for the UCL Tories’ suspension was because they fucked up so bad this time that they quite literally ended up on The Sun, as well as several other national papers - the Mail, the Telegraph, the Mirror – hell, even Pi Media (the other student newspaper at UCL) had a go at doing actual journalism for once!
But all is well – in the spirit of disagreeing well, the UCL Tories have now been permitted to return to campus as a society affiliated with your Students’ Union! Finally, a safe space for your incel/closeted Tory flatmate to booze up and voice their ‘hot takes’ about immigration – and it’s not in your communal kitchen! Don’t worry, these events are conducted under the offthe-record ‘Chatham House Rule’, which means they can use the N-word, hard R, as many times as they like without any repercussions! FREEDOM!!
cheesegratermagazine.org/investigations
TAKING REGISTER
HUNDREDS of student representatives are elected every October to represent your interests at the Union and beyond. Unfortunately, some of these reps have betrayed the trust of their constituents by failing to turn up to vote, according to the minutes available on the Union’s website.
From the Activities Zone: Addina Binti Amran (Volunteering Rep), Ankit Mehani (Volunteering Rep), and Ghali Moutawakil El Oudghiri (Sports Rep) missed all five meetings. Hrishita Agrawal (Societies Rep for Non-Performance Arts) missed four. This zone met five times last year.
From the Welfare Zone: Roger Holwerda (Hall Community Officer for Arthur Tattersall and John Tovell) and William Warwick (Hall Community Officer for Campbell East and West) missed all four meetings on the record. Notably, Rawleka Wilson and Rachel Lim (POC Officers) – the latter now a sabb officer – were among the reps who missed at least three. This zone met five times last year, but only four meeting minutes were available at press time.
From the Education Zone: Lilia Dimitrov (Postgraduate Research Rep for the Faculty of Population Health Sciences) missed three meetings on the record. This zone met five times last year, but most reps were elected after the first meeting, and only four meeting minutes were available at press time.
MEANWHILE, OUTSIDE STUDENT CENTRE...
WHILE the Tories rejoice in being let back onto campus, the Marxist Society remains outside of the Student Centre trying to sell you copies of the Socialist Worker.
Like the Tories, the Marxists were also suspended by the Union last October in a specatular display of bothsidesism, having been accused of ‘inciting violence’ when sharp-eyed haters spotted a clipart of a rifle on one of its posters that, coincidentally, happened to be promoting a pro-Palestine event. The difference, of course, is that the Marxists had a spine and refused to back down... at the cost of eternal banishment.
Now, word on the street is that the Marxists are looking for 30 signatures so they could reaffiliate with the Union. So, the next time you get stopped by a Marxist near campus, they might want your phone number, your money, and your signature... watch out!
Banishment: Two were banished, but only one is coming back in time for Freshers' Fair...
LONG LIVE APATHY
DESPITE holding onto the record of the largest student election in the UK, the Union faces three student officer vacancies because nobody cared enough to run.
The three student officer positions left vacant were the Accommodation and Housing Officer, the Trans Officer, and the UCL East Student Officer. In a demonstration of its iron-clad commitment to student-led governance, Union staff left a short line of text on the vacant officers’ respective webpages that read, ‘This role will be elected in the Autumn Elections’... boldly assuming that someone would be bothered enough to stand come October.
humour@cheesegrater magazine.org
Welcome back my dear gossip guzzlers. I know you’ve missed me, but I certainly haven’t missed you. It’s been a long summer and there’s plenty to discuss with all 50,000+ of you. Fifty. Thousand. Plus. There’s enough of you to fill the town of Dover and go spilling into the sea. As a result, UCL is positively heaving.
This is immediately apparent close to home, at Bitch HQ (more widely known as the student media office). Officially known as the Dame Kathleen Kenyon Meeting Room, this media suite is supposedly a shared office for all student media societies. Since its opening, Pi has attempted to claim ownership –unilaterally branding the space as the ‘Pi Media Office’. Unfortunately, several student journalists have been lost to the depths of the Lewis building trying to find this non-existent room. Inside...
[cont. from p. 3] ...one wall has been plastered with old issues of the Pi newspaper – a fond remembrance of a time when they lacked any competition. It's unclear who the target audience of this display is, presumably it could only be for the late Dame Kenyon herself; an archaeologist known for excavating fossils.
Regrettably, the race for space continues over at Bloomsbury Fitness. Word reaches me that Cheer and Parkour Club have been engaged in a blood feud over the much coveted Mandela Studio – the largest and bestequipped room on the fitness floor. The alternative is the multi-purpose room. With the name of a storage cupboard and maximum capacity to match, the prospect of condemning any soc to enter its dingy doors is bleak. I may be a bitch, but I believe in free-range. Goodness knows we lose enough brain cells to scrums and Scala – no need to start knocking heads on campus.
Even amidst the filth of UCLove, the need for space is palpable. Which is concerning considering that the majority of its users have never touched a woman. During exam season a student managed to make their mark on this institution by leaving ‘fucking shoe prints on the toilet seats’. Whilst I’m impressed at the flexibility and audacity required to occupy 2 toilets at once, I do not want any part in encouraging... that.
With all these spatial setbacks, I am relieved to congratulate one soc on clearing some space in their ranks. The UCL Socialist Feminists have severed ties with the ISA, an organisation which had some sorely slimy senior members. Shockingly, covering corruption with corruption doesn’t stick and the ISA is now in shambles. Best of luck to the socialist feminists, although they're off to a good start; if other socs bothered to weed out their most miserable members, I’d be out of a job.
That’s all the gossip that blossomed over this break. This Soc Bitch is keeping a close eye on the human cement mixer recognised as Freshers Week. It would be overly optimistic to expect our scheming socs to behave this year, so I’m sure you won’t have to wait too long for more piping-hot tea and tidbits. Good luck to all, you’ll be needing it.
Funny Fellows
TERFs (en général)
The hallowed turf of Bloomsbury is a wonderful place to be, especially if you have issues with transgender university attendees. The trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERF) are known to roam around campus, particularly near the Social Research Institute and the Institute of Education, occasionally writing some bits and bobs on why your bits and bobs determine what gender you can be. We’ve written about this crew of academics before (CG 86) but we can’t name them, as we’d probably be sunk into so much debt from legal fees that our lives would be made radically miserable and exclusionarily shite. We at The Cheese Grater don’t really like gender-realists for a number of reasons. Our opinion (don’t sue us) is that some of their writing on trans people is a bit transphobic and their proximity to free speech groups, like The Free Speech Union, is quite troubling, particularly by virtue of the latter group’s endorsement of some controversial figures (to say the least)... We wish we could write more on these lot, but we can’t. So much for free speech!
UCL Estates
UCL Estates is a funny one, they aren’t really viewed with much scrutiny from the student body despite how essential they are to the UCL student experience. Whilst not an academic grouping, they do impact teaching, insofar as it’s their responsibility to make sure classrooms are not falling apart, so we decided to include them in this column. UCL Estates is in charge of 246 separate properties across the UK, including 202 teaching buildings, research labs, offices and other non-residential buildings alongside 44 halls of residence. This is no small feat, but by virtue of their big budget (£249m in the 2023/24 academic year) they don’t seem to do a fantastic job at maintenance. If you read our accommodation piece last year (CG 87),
you’d know about ceilings falling through at John Dodgson, the plumbing issues at Ramsay Hall and the fact that the Huntley literally flooded and was forced to shut for a fair amount of time. The latter incident was a true travesty. As the Main Quad is set to close for renovation from December, we at The Cheese Grater have been placing bets on how badly, how over-schedule and how over-budget, the project will be. Only time will tell, but believe me, I don’t hold out much hope for their ‘grand project’ (to use François Mitterand’s term) being completed in a timely, or cost-effective, manner.
Dr Michael Spence
Where do we start with our dearest Provost? He’s been a longtime friend of this publication and is known across UCL as an all-around sound bloke. If you don’t know who Michael Spence is, he’s our endearing, ever-present-on-campus and totally flawless headmaster equivalent. Spence has a notorious reputation at UCL for his actions on all fronts. His obsession with free speech and Disagreeing Well (unless it’s with Palestinian protesters) coupled with his attachment to a charity which deems a bit of non-hetero action as ‘sexual immorality’ (CG 87) has made him quite the talking point on campus since his arrival from the University of Sydney in January 2021. On the topic of his time in Sydney, Spence left his vice-chancellorship there after ruffling a few feathers, even causing one of the university’s faculties to action a vote of no confidence. During his time down under, Mikey also spent ten thousand dollars of university money on an Oxford and Cambridge Club membership! We’re looking forward to seeing what ammunition our glorious leader will provide our hawkish investigations team this academic year.
l Comment: What is it with the Provost and ‘Disagreeing Well’? p8
Kiss Goodbye to the Main Quad until 2026, says UCL
Cover story: Freshers can kiss goodbye to the Main Quad and Cloisters as UCL announces closure from mid-December to January 2026.
Nick Miao Co-Editor-in-Chief
INA blog post titled ‘Improving experience and accessibility for our campus’ central spaces’, the University has announced its plans to close the Main Quad and the ground floor of the Wilkins Building from mid-December 2024 to January 2026 for major renovations ahead of its bicentenary anniversary in 2026.
The works represent the first phase of UCL’s ominously named ‘Estates Masterplan’ which, according to UCL Estates, is ‘A holistic and integrated plan, developed in consultation, to develop and operate our estate for the next 25 years.’ In other words, UCL students now and into the mid-to-near future can expect quite a lot of construction work in and around campus.
With three months to go before the Quad and the Cloisters are set to shut until after some of you graduate, one would hope that the University has a plan to mitigate the impact this would have on our campus experience. However, one source close to the University told The Cheese Grater that while concerns were raised about the potential disruptions the closure will cause as early as July, UCL still has not finalised its plan how to mitigate the disruptions. When we asked UCL for comment earlier this month, a spokesperson said,
‘We recognise that the works are going to have an impact on regular activities that would normally take place in the Quad and Wilkins Building.
‘The long-term improvement to these spaces, particularly regarding accessibility, will benefit and enhance our students’ experience for years to come.
‘Finding ways to limit that disruption for our students and staff is a top priority and we are drawing up plans with relevant stakeholders, including Students’ Union UCL, to mitigate the impact and support the community.’
UCL Estates Director of Capital Programme Hannah Milner added, ‘Working with key stakeholders, the Estates Capital Development team are looking forward to kickstarting the first phase of physical refurbishments across UCL to achieve project delivery of the central spaces in time for the Bicentennial celebrations in 2026. Creating spaces with a multi-functional capacity for the community is a consistent driver for both UCL and the talented team delivering this ground-breaking project.’
UCL tells us that the Estates Masterplan is aimed to ‘enhance the campus experience for everyone who works, studies and visits here. It is our shared environment and the setting for our success.’ And yet, with still no solid plans to mitigate the disruptions for the students who are already here, it is difficult to see how we fit into UCL’s vision of a ‘shared environment’.
This is probably because the new Quad was never intended to serve current students but rather those who are willing to pay an arm and a leg in a few years’ time. According to its 2022-27 Strategy Plan, UCL sees this as an ‘opportunity to increase the efficiency of our space utilisation’ and intends to ‘re-examin[e] our policy on unregulated student fees’ to ‘meet market demand’.
One society expecting to feel the impact of the closure is the Balls! Juggling and Circus Society, which has been meeting in the North Cloisters for the last twenty years and holds a monthly fire juggling night in the Quad. Shockingly, its President Adam Klicka only learned about the closure when prompted by The Cheese Grater. He said, ‘I’ve been completely in the dark... most of the info about it I got from you. Honestly, I’m quite worried.’ He added, ‘I feel like they are trying to keep it quiet so no one speaks up.’
In its reckless pursuit of expansion (to ‘meet market demand’), the University seems to have forgotten about those of us who are already here!
which are not finalised.
CHINA'S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
NEITHER the Provost nor the Students’ Union were under any illusion of how higher education is funded in post-austerity Britain, as a joint delegation was sent to China last May to secure the bag.
In a blog post titled ‘Strengthening ties with China’, the Students’ Union said it was keen to ‘explore new ways [to] engage our international students’, over 15,000 of which are from China. ‘Therefore, building strong ties with China and developing mutually beneficial projects with Chinese institutions can be incredibly impactful’, it said.
It’s not entirely clear how strengthening ties with a random Chinese university would ‘ease the transition for our international students’. It’s also unclear if there are any actual ties at all, as the Union only said it ‘hope[s]’ to ‘develop meaningful partnerships that will expand the number and range opportunities for our students’ – in other words, nothing is in black and white as things stand.
While one might be tempted to pin this as yet another example of Union sabbatical officers embarking on expensive and pointless vanity projects, it doesn’t really matter if students ever get to see these opportunities materialise. That’s because this trip was never about international students but rather, international fees. Last year, a Guardian analysis revealed that international students accounted for 31% of UCL’s income in 2021/22, totalling £1.75 billion.
Even the Union must admit, ‘This trip was one small step to improving the way we support our international students’, but one giant step for UCL’s ever-deepening pockets.
NM
Hello, Goodbye: UCL reveals 'design visualisations' of 'possible designs',
SCRAP THE ALPACAS
ON 28 August at 4:42pm, UCL posted another Instagram story of their bloody Alpacas.
Posted with the caption ‘#WelcomeToUCL’, the video from April 2023 appears to suggest the return of the Latin American long-necked sheep (who are known to occasionally spit at people) for this year’s Freshers’ Week, in efforts to promote UCL’s notoriously accessible and compassionate support networks.
The Cheese Grater doesn't have a specific editorial vendetta against alpacas; they’re probably in our good books. Saying this, they don’t exactly qualify as academic and/or mental health support. Nonetheless, getting spat in the face is probably the most fitting welcome to anyone joining UCL this Autumn.
The fact UCL promotes alpacas as the pinnacle of student life at the University is also quite fitting to reality. They probably are the best thing going in ways of extracurricular activity. At least with alpacas you’ll be spat on by a petting zoo animal, rather than by a 5’4” men’s hockey 3rd team player who’s just made you consume 40 pints of Amstel in your initiation to the quasi-animalistic UCL sports scene (CG 83).
Before turning to a commentary on UCL’s support services, we thought to highlight some of our favourite comments from the initial post.
@akhil.chandurkar.1 commented: ‘�������������� Please take me to your country as a victim of dehumanisation from India’ (Whatever that means...)
@doctuba commented: ‘What about the alpacas’ mental health?’
And @m aakye asked of UCL: ‘Can you comment on the wellbeing of the animals?’
The latter two users raise the important point of animals being subjected to involuntary torture (being caged and surrounded by UCL students). Alas, it’s just another thing on UCL’s far-from-spotless record. The Cheese Grater reached out to the alpacas for comment but heard nothing back; a language barrier perhaps?
Whilst The Cheese Grater appreciates that UCL, in promoting alpacas, alongside ‘sunrise walk(s)’ and ‘pet[ting] a pooch’, puts forth a nice introduction to welfare and support at the University, the fact that such activities are promoted as the forefront of UCL’s support system is rather annoying. Freshers, one can reasonably assume, would rather see a comprehensive guide to accessing mental health and academic services than being subjected to interaction with a few gormless mammals.
In all seriousness, UCL needs to promote substantive guides to support services, which can often be hard to find and intimidating to access, as opposed to alpacas and sunrise walks (the latter of which, The Cheese Grater can report, weren’t attended particularly well).
RD
WHAT WE MISSED...
UNFORTUNATLEY, our previous editors missed a fair bit of big news last year. Here’s some national stories about UCL from the 2023/24 academic year we couldn’t be arsed to report on, brought to you by our previous editor-in-chief Robert Delaney.
Module Cancelled after Chinese Students Complain
In March, Associate Professor Michelle Shipworth, who is based in the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, broke the news to the Telegraph that a module she had been teaching for ten years would be cut due to complaints by Chinese students.
After showing her class a slide of the Global Slavery Index and asking why China has such a large proportion of slaves (23.5 million, by the way), a ‘very nationalist Chinese student’ objected to its use. Subsequently, Shipworth was banned from teaching the course in order to protect the ‘commercial interests’ of attracting Chinese students.
But, before you feel too bad about her, readers should know that Shipworth is a member of the Free Speech Union and the LGB Alliance. So... do what you will with that information.
Court Date Set for Covid Student Claim Group
In July, after a breakdown in negotiations between UCL senior management and a group of UCL students regarding pandemic tuition fee compensation, a High Court judge has fixed a date to hear the students’ claims.
Between January and April 2026, a judge will oversee a four week trial at the High Court, which will decide where the liability for refunds over Covid education should lie. UCL has previously argued that these proceedings should not go ahead until students had completed the notoriously difficult internal complaints procedures or the OIA ombuds process, but the High Court rejected this attempted mandate, citing questions around ‘whether UCL and the OIA have sufficient resources to deal with this volume of complaints’.
The firm leading the students’ claim, Harcus Parker and Asserson, believes that over 155,000 students have asked them to seek compensation from universities across the UK, and thousands are expected to join the bandwagon. Long story short, if this goes ahead, UCL’s endowment may shrink a fair bit...
UCL East Library Opens... with No Books
Back in January, UCL library services were caught in a bit of a pickle when they realised that they left their books at home.
The near £500m new campus in Stratford, which contains state-of-the-art facilities and a whole new set of showers for UCL students to shag in, was left without any books due to a lack of shelves in the Marshgate Library. The Tab (lol) reported that students based at UCL East had to wait up to five days for books they ordered to arrive, highlighting the distinct lack of basic university planning oversight for the new campus. This is yet another episode in the saga of UCL’s newest colony, with its accommodation block, One Pool Street, experiencing numerous issues including a delayed finish which saw freshers housed in hotels rather than halls (CG 84). RD
Sales Pitch: Union sabbs were sent to China on a recruitment drive for UCL last May.
No Free Speech for UCL’s Outsourced Workforce
Despite his repeated claims that the ‘right to protest, debate, and challenging ideas is fundamental to our role as a university’, the President and Provost Michael Spence appears to have no interest in extending the freedom of speech to UCL’s over 200 outsourced security workers, writes Investigations Editor Malvika Murkumbi.
WHILE the Provost has begrudgingly agreed to ‘disagree well’ with directly employed UCL staff who expressed solidarity with pro-Palestine student protesters on campus, outsourced security workers have been the target of intimidation by UCL management and its subcontractor Bidvest Noonan for doing the same, even when they are off-duty.
Outsourced workers have long suffered mistreat ment from management at UCL. In an interview with The Cheese Grater, the Independent Workers’ Union (IWGB) universities branch organiser Charles Aprile explained that security staff are often forced to ‘fight and protest every single issue just to have a dialogue with management’ for issues that could have been an email in most workplaces. At London’s Global University, however, they ‘have to kick up a lot of fuss to get very simple things sorted.’
views and opinion’ to themselves. Notably, he added, ‘This includes officers who are on break or off duty.’
In the same email, Woodley was also kind enough to include a bulleted list of eight ‘other acts that are deemed inappropriate’, including ‘being over friendly’ to student protesters, ‘making comments to or about the protest or members of the protest’, ‘talking to press’ (whoops), and even ‘commenting and giving opinions on the protest on social media’.
Unfriendly Reminder
Over the summer, Bidvest management has taken active steps to prohibit its staff from expressing any form of solidarity with the student movement. In an email addressed to all UCL security staff seen by The Cheese Grater, Bidvest’s Account Director Dominic Woodley said, ‘It has come to my attention that some members of the security staff are interested in joining the protesters at the encampment for Friday prayers. I would like to remind you that this would be wholly inappropriate and could be seen as supporting/ participating in the protest.’ He included a not-so-friendly reminder that security staff ‘must remain neutral’ (in all caps, bold, and underlined) and keep ‘personal
Aprile tells us that ‘Security guards have found that even by greeting people, shaking hands, smiling at people, they've been told off by management for doing those kinds of things, or been threatened with disciplinary action, been sent written reminders, all-staff reminders about not speaking to the students.’ He was also keen to point out the glaring double standard in treatment: ‘[Directly employed staff] are able to go out when they're able to go out when they're off duty, speak to people, participate in the encampment, go to the teachouts, but the people in security have been told explicitly that they cannot do that.’
Union Buster
In addition to explicitly restricting their freedom of speech, Bidvest management has simultaneously adopted a series of intimidation tactics to further undermine solidarity in its outsourced workforce. Among them is the practice of hiring lower-paid temporary staff (‘agency workers’) to deal with protesters.
The practice of hiring agency workers is almost twice as exploitative because they
are often paid significantly less than permanent staff, enjoy little to no benefits and, owing to their precarious immigration status, are much less willing to speak out or organise collectively. One security staff member, who wishes to remain anonymous, told us that ‘Luckily for us [subcontracted workers], we are unionised... we can protest against stuff. But unfortunately for [agency workers], they can’t. A lot of them are very sad... They really hate doing it and hate even being there, but they have no choice.’
One (worrying) benefit to commercialisation is that you suddenly become an expert in union busting. When security staff went on strike in October 2022, the University hired agency workers to replace striking staff, a move jointly condemned by the UCU and the IWGB as ‘an intimidatory strike-breaking tactic’ and ‘a violation of UCL’s commitment to parity on account of these workers receiving lower rates of pay.’
It is also worth noting that the High Court had recently ruled the previous government’s decision to allow agency workers to cover strikes to be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Unfortunately, that has not stopped London’s Global University, which avoided a legal challenge by refusing to recognise the IWGB for the purposes of collective bargaining.
The Root of All Evils
UCL has thus far distanced itself from labour disputes with outsourced staff by claiming that it did not employ them directly. Be that as it may, the Provost can hardly outsource his moral obligation to treat these support staff as human beings worthy of equal dignity and respect. If Spence is serious about the University’s commitment to the freedom of speech, then he has a responsibility to ensure that this right is extended to its outsourced
support staff – without whom the University will cease to function – by intervening when its subcontractors take repressive measures against its workforce.
Ultimately, Bidvest’s continued mistreatment of its staff and UCL’s wilful ignorance is a testament to the fact that outsourcing is a fundamentally exploitative labour practice. As Aprile aptly summarised, ‘The response to this has shown this two-tier system that is created when you have a private company operating in a public institution.’ He added, ‘There's that two-tier system in terms of people's freedom of speech and expression, which manifests itself with the continued existence of outsourcing.’
Remember Who the Real Enemy Is
Towards the end of our interview, the anonymous security staffer was keen to stress the value of student-staff solidarity, telling us that ‘Without student support, we wouldn’t have got [pay] parity here at UCL. And without student support, we will not get [employed] in-house’. The staffer was particularly disheartened to see that many student protesters have been led to believe that security staff are hostile against them. ‘It’s just because our hands are so tied, we can’t directly help them or protest for them ourselves’, but notes that both trade unions representing security workers, the IWGB and Unison, support the student protests.
Make no mistake that Bidvest and UCL are playing divide and conquer to disrupt student-staff solidarity by pitching students against an exploited workforce. The least we can do is to remember who the real enemy is.
A spokesperson for UCL responded with the following comment:
‘Our security staff are highly valued and respected members of our diverse community, fulfilling essential roles on which we all depend.
‘This includes helping us to meet our legal duty and commitment to promote freedom of speech within the law, while ensuring the safety and security of our community and enabling our education and research activity to continue. Our security staff need to be seen to be impartial in order to carry out this vital role.
‘The pay and key conditions of our outsourced security staff are the same as those of their directly employed colleagues.’
Comment: What Is It With the Provost and ‘Disagreeing Well’?
Andrea Bidnic Investigations Editor
IF you are new to UCL, you will probably notice very soon that the Provost has a particular obsession with ‘free speech’, a little something called ‘Disagreeing Well’.
After three years in office, the President and Provost Michael Spence’s record on free speech is convoluted on paper and contradictory in practice. In his first interview with The Cheese Grater in 2021, he defended the view that UCL was a platform for speakers of all persuasions, not an opinion leader or even a moral actor. ‘I can’t decide what speech is ethical and not ethical. I’m a Vice Chancellor, I’m not the Pope’, he said.
As such, he determined that the only bar for platforming speakers is the legality of their speech, however controversial: ‘I’m just not in the business of censorship. And I don’t think the university should be in the business of censorship.’
Last year, the Provost hard-launched the Disagreeing Well campaign, a series of public talks involving speakers such as centrist icon and podcast microcelebrity Alastair Campbell, focusing on disagreement in online spaces, higher education, and public life.
The Provost appeared in the Times Higher Education emphatically arguing against ‘cancel culture’ and urging students to ‘disagree well’ rather than censor. ‘It means facing up to disagreements and learning from the process’ by ‘balancing humility and conviction’ rather than ‘avoiding the disagreements’, he said.
Powerful speech, if only he truly meant it... To say the Provost is ‘avoiding the disagreement’ would be euphemistic: a growing number of students who vocally ‘disagree well’ with the University's institutional position on Palestine and trans rights continues to be ignored.
It’s also worth remembering that the Provost’s efforts to cancel ‘cancel culture’ fundamentally stem from right
wing rhetoric. His vision of free speech mirrors the Tories’ Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2022, which claims to protect freedom of speech in universities by banning the practice of ‘deplatforming’. It marked a break with the ‘No Platform’ policy championed by the National Union of Students (NUS) since 1974 to stop racists, fascists, transphobes, and rape apologists from speaking in universities because, as it happens, a university is not Twitter dot com.
At the time, the free speech law provoked widespread criticism, including UCL law professor George Letsas, who described it as an attack on academic freedom to ‘benefit right-wing speech by external speakers’. He added, ‘If the government really cared about academic freedom, it would restrict the scope of the proposed offence to cases where academics lose their jobs or are denied promotion merely because of their ideas, beliefs or views.’ The law has since been suspended by the Labour government.
Recent events around campus have proved Professor Letsas’s worries correct. Next door at SOAS and down at the Strand in King's, students' unions have been barring their elected officers from taking office over their actions and comments in support of Palestine and in opposition with the administrations. Meanwhile, as stated before, the Provost has had no problem overlooking and silencing protests at home turf when student activists took part in a 100-day-long encampment on the Main Quad with three clear demands, which UCL failed to meet, including divestment from arms companies.
The Provost must understand that the University cannot claim to be ‘progressive’ while remaining in all circumstances ‘an umpire, not a participant’. To be progressive, an institution must question its moral foundations and to whom it associates with, and above all allow its members to do the same without fear or favour — everything UCL keeps on brilliantly failing to achieve. To quote Dante, ‘The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.’
20 Years of The Cheese Grater
The Cheese Grater celebrates 20 years of wasting UCL printer ink and pissing off the Union with a look at our greatest hits over the years
l Editorial p10
Nick Miao and Sirjan Narang Co-Editors-in-Chief
February 2005 (CG 04)
The first article that really pissed off the Union was ‘David Renton Under Attack ’ by Malcom Granger, who reported that the Union had been secretly plotting to remove the Education and Welfare Officer, ‘denounced as lazy and incompetent by many of his colleagues’. Hm... why does that sound familiar?
Renton would later write to The Cheese Grater saying that he felt ‘deflation and angst’ reading the report. That's music to our ears.
March 2006 (CG 09)
Pi slander has been the staple of this publication since day one. In 2006, we published a leaked email that suggested Pi editor Simon Dedman had broken election rules by endorsing a Nick Barnard, a sabbatical candidate from Pi using the society's mailing list. Barnard went on to win the election, but neither were punished for this transgression...
Autumn 2012 (CG 35)
Our cover story for this issue, ‘ UCL Stratford: Full Steam Ahead’ by Oscar Webb, revealed UCL's plans to build a second campus in East London, despite objections by local residents to the demolition of their homes and failures by Newham Council during its consultation process. This story was later picked up by The Guardian and the national press.
Ten years later, UCL East would find itself on the ftont covers of The Cheese Grater once again... (see next highlight!)
Winter 2022 (CG 84)
Neil Majithia and Elettra Plation won Best News Piece at the 2023 Student Publication Awards and Best Media Piece at the UCL Arts Awards for their article ‘Chun Buckets Everywhere’, an exposé of the toxic initiation culture of UCL's sports societies despite an official ban. Safe to say that the rugby lads weren't a fan of the piece, but then again it's good to know that some of them could read!
Winter 2023 (CG 86)
Mads Brown's investigations into transphobia at the Institute of Education ‘ TERF Out Transphobia’ not only won us Best Media Piece at the UCL Arts Awards the second year in a row, it also left a positive impact on campus as the IOE agreed to start a workshop in conjunction with The Cheese Grater to promote trans identity and visibility at UCL!
Summer 2024 (CG 87)
In our most recent issue published over summer, ‘ The Provost's Record on LGBTQ+ Support Sinks to New Low ’ by Rebekah Wright revealed the Provost's role as a trustee for the Christian missionary charity Mercy Ships, which considers homosexuality and sex before marriage to be ‘immoral’, standing in stark contrast to UCL's persistent rhetoric promoting diversity and inclusion. Which is it, Dr Spence?
Meanwhile, Robert Delaney's coverage of the History Department's redundancy crisis (‘Bleak Reality of the History Department's Redundancy Crisis’) was picked up by the teaching union UCU, which went onto start an industrial dispute with the Department. Can't say we're not good at stirring shit!
The Mailsack
editor@cheesegrater magazine.org
Please Write to Us
Dear Readers,
The Cheese Grater had a brief experiment with a letters column called the Mailsack around ten years ago which didn't last very long, but we thought we'd try again.
We are now accepting letters addressed to the editors from all UCL students and staff, current and former, regardless of whether you have a membership. These are short opinion pieces of up to 300 words, on any given issue (vaguely) related to student life at UCL, London, and beyond. To the great delight of our haters, we also take feedback (good and bad) on our issues and articles.
The Editors
Single Tory Seeking Love
Dear Editors,
I come to you with an unfortunate set of circumstances. I have been at UCL for two long years now, but I have yet to be mentioned or identified on UCLove. Whilst the platform is filled with tofu-reading guardian-eating hypersexual feminine women-boys, I really want someone to love me, you see. As per Mother dearest, I am a rather leng individual but no one has put out a message seeking my company. Should I apply to be a bartender at the IOE? Or a Barista at the Print Room? They seem to get all the attention. Alternatively, I could become an incel, they seemed to have gained a lot of traction on the page in the last annum. I quite like the latter option due to my time in the UCL Conservative Society. My chums there were great fun! They gave me the loving attention I deserved, unlike the WOKEY WOMEN on UCLove. EQUAL PAY, TAKE IT AWAY I SAY!
Anyhow, I would love it if you wrote a column for the folks like me out there; those of us who just want a UCLover. Your publication brags about giving a voice to the people, well I am a member of the silent majority! Polite gentlemen always finish last and we deserve better!
Rufus Barty Diddlebum VII, Garden Halls
Editorial: Welcome to the New Cheese Grater
Nick Miao and Sirjan Narang Co-Editors-in-Chief
AS this is technically the ‘freshers’ issue, we figured it would be appropriate to introduce new readers to this peculiar publication.
The Cheese Grater is a broach church of creative and inquisitive individuals, encompassing investigative and satirical journalism, sketch comedy, and an intersectional feminist zine called Women’s Wrongs. All branches of The Cheese Grater have won various awards both within UCL and nationally and would be too long to list.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of The Cheese Grater, founded in 2004 as a protest against the pro-establishment agenda of Pi Media which, until recently, served as the unofficial mouthpiece of the Students’ Union. Our anti-establishment editorial position is literally hard-wired into our DNA.
In recent years, the decline of Pi has put us in a difficult position. No longer can we be negatively defined solely against our former competitor ever since they fizzled into irrelevance. It is an unfortunate outcome for everyone involved that the burden of journalistic responsibility has fallen upon the low-budget publication named after a common household item.
We hope to have carried out this task to the best of our ability. Last year, we were named UCL’s Best Publication at the Arts Awards, as well as winning Best Media Piece with our investigation on transphobia at the Institute of Education.
At the same time, we – the student media community – also failed to inform the student body sufficiently about an unashamedly incompetent sabbatical officer and allowed them to win a second term in office, which they would have carried out had they not resigned.
Student democracy at UCL remains fragile and inchoate because it lacks a robust student media community. So, as much as we would love to blame Pi Media’s editorial wisdom in deciding to ditch campus journalism, we are equally, if not more to blame for the sad state of student politics.
This is why this editorial team is pledging to be really, really annoying in the coming year. We will be paying close attention to the new sabbatical leadership and UCL’s hundreds of elected representatives, to ensure that they are acting in our collective best interests.
Additionally, we want to reassert ourselves as a progressive and staunchly anti-racist publication. Our values and our audacity have long been what sets us apart from the unambitious Pi and the Murdoch-owned Tab, and it is important, we believe, that we continue in this proud tradition. To this end, we must recognise the role played by mainstream media outlets in aggravating the horrendous violence we saw across Britain over the summer, by normalising racist and anti-immigration rhetoric in their reporting. Several media outlets, including the BBC and ITV, referred to the rioters as ‘protestors’, ‘far-right activists’, and their actions as ‘disorder’, which we unreservedly condemn, as such use of language normalises hate speech and violence, whether it they intended to or not. We speak on behalf of the UCL community that refugees are welcome here.
This editorial team is ready to be a positive force for change on campus to shape a more informed and engaged student body. The Union must allow us to help them with this task by providing media groups with the proper funding and support. Whatever the higher-ups may think of us wokey student journalists, we perform the critical task of informing students about what is happening on campus and why it is relevant to them. Ultimately, the Union cannot begin to tackle student apathy without kickstarting a discourse about student politics on campus, and one cannot have a genuine debate about anything without the dissenting voices found in this very publication.
It is at this point that we invite you to join The Cheese Grater, to write with us, draw with us, act with us, and girlboss with us. Membership is £7 for the entire year and gets you access to all of our meetings and various socials. The best way to support independent journalism is to do it yourself... and by paying the membership fee!
Student Politics is Broken, and It’s Our Fault.
The Cheese Grater's complacency has broken student politics at UCL. It's time to take some responsibility. Writes Puzzlemaster Seth Harris.
STUDENT POLITICS at UCL has a major crisis of engagement. In last year’s Leadership Race, the Union celebrated a ‘record-breaking’ turnout of... 23.7%. While mildly impressive for a student election, the reality is far worse: on average, only 2,679 students – a mere 5.2% of the student body – voted in each of the six sabbatical positions.
Because turnout is so low, the optimal campaign strategy is not to persuade a broad church of students to vote for you but to source your votes from one massive block of people from a particular group or society, in the hopes of diluting the handful of students who actually care about Union policy – or alternatively shove a QR code in the face of enough people in the Student Centre in the hopes that they will vote for you on the spot just to get you to go away (CG 84).
Nowhere was this more evident than exActivities Officer Aria Shi – a sabb who had the work ethic of a nepo baby interning at their dad’s consulting firm – who was able to spend an entire year sitting on her phone in meetings and wasting Union money on unusable sleeping pods (CG 87) and still easily get re-elected for a second term, which she didn’t even want!
While there are mechanisms to remove an unpopular officer outside of elections, they are also rendered useless in the face of student disengagement. If you can’t get people to spend 30 seconds voting during the Leadership Race, it’s a pipe dream to get 1% of the student body to sign a no-confidence petition between their term-time assignments. This makes our elected officers invulnerable for their entire terms regardless of their poor decisions, be they motivated by malice or incompetence. While Aria did choose to resign in the end, if she was as stubborn as she was lazy, we would probably still be stuck with her to this day.
So, who’s responsible for this apathy epidemic? While I delight in blaming the Union for most things, it would be disingenuous to do so, this once. Compared to other unis, UCL Union’s democratic structures
are honestly not too bad, but completely underutilised. Did you know you can just turn up to any policy zone meeting and quiz the sabbatical officers who run this place? You can even propose a policy beforehand and they have to consider it. The social media team also does a surprisingly good job at advertising the Leadership Race, going so far as to splurge on hiring a campus Ferris wheel (of questionable safety) to promote the election. I think it's fair to say they do really try on this front.
Nonetheless, a functioning democracy requires consistent scrutiny of its leaders to deter them from making bad decisions by sparking outrage at their failings, which in turn motivates people to vote. This responsibility falls to the press in normal circumstances. The problem is that our student media is pathetically bad at doing this.
Now, while I expect no better from the centrist propaganda machine that is the Pi Media editorial team, The Cheese Grater proclaims to be the anti-establishment, left-leaning publication on campus, standing up for the people against those in charge. And yet, we have become in recent years an outdated and elitist publication, more concerned with acting as a springboard for aspiring middle-class journalists than pushing for change and accountability on campus. Indeed, where was The Cheese Grater when the Education Zone voted down the Fossil Free Careers policy? Where was The Cheese Grater when the Welfare Zone regularly failed to meet quorum? Where was The Cheese Grater when the Sports Officer tried to argue that men were a marginalised group on campus? These are open, public meetings where reps are consistently failing the students they represent. We should have been naming and shaming every last rep who have the audacity to stand for election, only to fail to show up to vote at meetings. We should have been shouting from the rooftops that one of our part-time officers was a closet sexist! Sure, we ran quite a few pieces on Aria (and still then could have done more), the outgoing officer was merely a symptom, not the cause of the eroding accountability of student leaders on campus.
We also do a terrible job of educating and informing students in an easily digestible format. Most investigations & voices articles take the form of long analytical pieces and while I am sure they are all of award-winning quality, they would also bore the average TikTok addicted UCL student to death.
In writing this article, I went back to read a few pieces and had to use a dictionary to decipher what they were on about an embarrassing number of times. While this may just be a symptom of being a physics grad with the reading age of a toddler, I do worry that articles are often pitched at a high level of prior understanding of an issue. Intellectual superiority and having the moral high ground are worthless if it leads to no real actual change, other than bragging rights on your LinkedIn to a bunch of privately educated pseudo-progressives about how woke you are being in a magazine that no one outside the society ever bothers to read. Building a wider audience is far more beneficial when it comes to raising awareness rather than preaching to the same sect of people who already understand and agree.
Not always having to produce such long pieces also has the benefit of not having to spend ages writing it – as that by the time it's published no one cares about it anymore. People want to hear about stories as they happen, not having to wait months for a synopsis in an end of term publication. While it might be fun to cosplay as a broadsheet journalist in the 1900s, it is in no way compatible with the fast-paced media scene we now see. I understand that some may fear that such a departure from the magazine's Private Eye-esque style would go against the magazine's tradition, or even risk accusations of tabloidisation. But the Private Eye does not have the same social responsibility as one of the two main student publications on campus. Simply put, if we don’t do it, no one else will.
The editors of The Cheese Grater now face an existential choice: adapt to the 21st century like mainstream journalism or face inevitable irrelevance with the ranks of Pi
Humour and Satire
humour@cheesegrater magazine.org
UCL SPELLS OUR NAME WRONG AGAIN
By our Grammar Correspondent
THE Cheese Grater Magazine was forced to change its name to “The Cheese grator” due to yet another UCL copywriting error.
Posted to UCL’s Instagram Account on 12 August 2024, a subtitled promotional video, featuring our very own ex-investigations editor Rebekah Wright, managed to spell ‘The Cheese Grater’ wrong. The video claimed our society's name to be ‘The Cheese grator’, prompting editorial staff to battle with the UCL social media admins who are now forcing the student publication to change its name to save face.
This is the second time in just a few months that a UCL institution has failed to spell our name correctly, with Students’ Union UCL calling us ‘The Cheesegrater’ (without the proper spacing) on official union documents and award certificates, technically denying us of our title as UCL’s publication of the year. Senior editors have now decided that the institutional inability of UCL to spell our name correctly, something which has plagued the publication since it launched in 2004, is too overpowering, and have motioned to officially change our name to ‘The Cheese grator’ to prevent further chaos.
Missing Fresher from Last Year
Found in the IOE
A MISSING first-year student has been found alive inside the Institute of Education, but remains stuck behind a locked door.
Teresa was last seen in October 2023 by her hall flatmates but was not reported as missing until the end of the academic year because everyone assumed that she was just in her room, according to sources close to her.
The discovery was made last week when Teresa was spotted in the IOE Masterplan (Phase 74) construction site on Level 8 of Core C. Unfortunately, there is no way to reach Teresa at the moment as the door that connects Cores B and C is card-controlled. However, the ex-fresher remains in good spirits and was happy to take questions from The Cheese Grater through the gap in the door.
‘At first, I was terrified,’ Teresa told The Cheese Grater. ‘I kept asking people, “Is this the beginning of the maze or the end?” And they looked at me like I was crazy.’
In reference to the ongoing renovations, she said, ‘The walls keep moving in the night. I think I'm seeing things too. Last week, I saw a mechanical spider crawling down the hall. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a Henry Hoover. Unplugged. But soon, I learned to be thankful for these walls. They are the only thing keeping me from the real world that is behind them. You don’t have to pay rent in the IOE.’
She added that she had been taking her lectures on Zoom in the past year. ‘All of my lecturers were very understanding when I told them that I was stuck in the IOE. I think this must’ve happened to them as well at some point in the past. They all wished me good luck because I will need it.’
When asked why nobody had bothered to check in on her, she said, ‘UCL Student Support and Wellbeing did send me a welfare check email a few months ago, but when I told them about my situation they just sent me an outdated map of the IOE and told me to figure it out.’
Meanwhile, the rescue squad...
GOVERNMENT ISSUES BAN ON PHINEAS SPORTS NIGHT
THE UK's environment watchdog Defra has issued a ban on ‘Sports Night’ at Phineas Bar, citing serious concerns about the stench of sweaty rugby boys.
This comes as news broke that an alarming number of freshers reportedly passed out upon opening the doors to Phineas Bar at the most recent Sports Night last Wednesday.
One survivor told The Cheese Grater that ‘The waft of sweaty air mixed with a sprinkle of Lynx Africa hit me like a freight train when I opened that second door.’
Another survivor described Phineas Bar on Sports Night as the ‘antithesis of [soap and candle shop] Lush’, explaining, ‘while both places give off an intense fragrance, no one who goes to Sports Night has ever used soap.’
‘When people say that Phineas Sports Night has an exceptional atmosphere, they literally mean that it has its own atmosphere’, said one climatology professor at UCL. ‘The government ban will likely threaten Phineas’ delicate ecosystem of rugby boys and netball girls.
Survivors: Three freshers pictured evacuating from Phineas Bar last Wednesday.
Top Five Spots on Campus to have a Breakdown in — Tried and Tested
HAS the thrill of Freshers been replaced by the eldritch horror that is Turnitin, or worse, UCL Accommodation? I’ve been there too. Just as the autumn leaves return to the ground each year, so did I invariably find myself questioning my entire existence in the same Student Centre toilet stall. But sometime last year, crouched on my usual soggy bog, inspiration struck. I was no bird, and no net ensnared me – did I not deserve bigger, better sobbing spots on campus? Hell, why should any traumatised undergrad limit themselves to the space between the long snaking queue and the thick wads of soaked toilet paper on the floor?
And so this list was born, after months of painstaking on-site research, to the benefit of newly disillusioned freshers and crumbling final-years alike. Am I qualified to give practical advice for your problems? No. Am I here to lend a listening ear? Also no. But thanks to me, kids, you’ll be able to cry in style — Keziah Cho
Some people look at the bright red tiles covering every inch of the walls here and deem them overstimulating. I call them visual aids: the adrenaline induced by this bold colour scheme might be just the thing to send you over the edge for a cathartic meltdown. Bonus: come Spring Term, the toilet doors are converted to personal billboards for desperate candidates in the Students’ Union Leadership Race, so halfway through your crisis you can contemplate which sabbatical candidate to place your trust in. That’s a win for democracy.
Basic, but iconic. Between the John Lewis-clad girl picking at her Pret hummus bowl and the couple making out in the back, there should be just enough space for you to curl up in the foetal position. If any of those pesky cap and gown-wearing graduates shoot you awkward glances because you’re having a breakdown between them and the camera, hold your ground. It’s your pivotal coming-of-age moment and they should respect that.
Seeking an extra-luxe option? This delightfully soulless room in the deep recesses of the IOE offers carpeted floors and a baffling number of spinny chairs, forming an artificial grove perfect for lying facedown. The occasional seminar group might come and go, but don’t let that detract from the experience. It’s efficient too— as a new student you’ll probably be in tears trying to navigate the building anyway, so might as well unleash all that pent-up rage.
2. Law section of the Main Library
Privacy is good and all, but sometimes it pays to make a public spectacle out of your anguish. If you’re feeling like you can’t do this anymore, at least be strategic and drag a few other people into incapacitation hell with you— especially those clear-minded enough to do a career-focused degree. STEM students are androids, so your best bet is the law kids, who will probably be at least a little distracted from their work by someone rocking back and forth on the floor and muttering ‘put me in the ground’. Serves them right for having essentially their own swanky library.
God may forsake the undergrad, but the light of Jeremy Bentham shines perpetually upon the wretched of the Student Centre. Sometimes you just need someone to listen to you, and who better to take your grievances to than the spiritual founder of UCL? Note, through your tears, the golden waxy sheen of his face, the fatherly gaze of his browless (but no less majestic) eyes, the wide benevolent brim of his beige hat promising shelter. Jeremy sees. Jeremy understands.
‘What’s up guys, it's your boy Bartholomew Montgomery-Jones the DJ here. Get ready for another full eight hours of EDM on repeat! Make sure to like and subscribe!!’ *un-tss un-tss* (cont. for eight hours)
Editor's note: None of us have actually listened to, or know anyone who listens to, Rare FM. In fact, we're not even sure if Rare FM is still on air. An aptly named pirate radio station whose listeners are rarer than a Cheese Grater reader.
5. Phineas toilets
4. Portico
3. IOE seminar room W3.08
1. Next to Jeremy Bentham
Humour & Satire cheesegratermagazine.org/humour
‘NOBODY WANTS TO DRAW ANYMORE’: GRAPHICS EDITOR
THE Cheese Grater’s new Graphics Editor Jasmine Yiu has issued a desperate plea to freshers to join The Cheese Grater after printing almost no graphics in any of its issues for nearly two years.
The Graphics Team, which for a long time consisted of no more than three people, has been struggling to keep up with the demand for content as readers’ attention span and comprehension abilities dropped dramatically since the launch of Instagram Reels. In fact, a conscription program had to be implemented in order to produce the graphics that appeared in our last issue.
The Cheese Grater is begging anyone who is capable of using Microsoft Paint and/ or deems themselves to be mildly funny to join the Graphics Team. Satire and Graphics meetings take place weekly on Tuesdays 6-7pm in the South Quad Teaching Block.
SPOTTED ON REDDIT...
Opinion: Remember Your Place, Losers
Written by real serious journalist Shepard Pye
As Pie Media is the oldest and largest student journalism society in the Empire, the editors at the ‘Cheese Grater’ have rightly asked us to write them a short pre-obituary marking twenty years of their publication’s ragged existence.
A short history lesson for the less-cultured readers of ‘The Cheese grator’: did you know that the low-quality rag that you are currently reading would not exist had it not been for Pie? Back in 2004, some self-righteous asshole named René Lavanchy decided that we were too much of a pro-establishment suck-up to UCL and the Union. No idea where he got that idea from, apart from the fact that we are literally named after the former Provost Sir David Pye.
Anyway, that delusional traitor René went on to start a splinter publication named after a common household item, printing his insane ramblings with ol’ trusty UCL
AITA for moving into group study pod 2.10? submitted 12 hours ago * by avgfinancebro
I (21M) am in my third year at UCL. After battling the birds and the bees in more ways than one, (flatcest and a joint wasp-pigeon invasion) I decided that I couldn’t stay in the house share for my final year.
Instead, I have bullied my coursemates into booking room 2.10 for me. We all book 3-hour study blocks each day until all 24 hours are covered. I have been here for 3 weeks and even started decorating the walls with post-it notes (it's the little things). Luckily security hasn’t noticed yet, I bought a blue Bidvest Noonan coat and have blended in with the other staff. I’ve even been sent on a tea break a couple of times.
I’m losing control of my coursemates though. They are threatening to “report me to wellbeing services” and other such nonsense. However, without their bookings, it’ll be difficult to keep the freshers and masters students out.
Am I the asshole or should I stay and stand my ground? My backup option is to buy the clubbing wristband and move into the toilets at Ministry.
[–] uclcheesegrater 1k points 10 hours ago
YTA. What the fuck dude.
[–] real_dr_mikeyspence 36 points 6 hours ago
Learn to disagree well you woke snowflake!
printers. Not much has changed since then. Unfortunately, what should have been a short-lived embarrassment turned out to rob us of multiple awards over the next two decades.
The point is, ‘Cheesegrater’ readers shouldn’t celebrate too early. Word on the street is that you guys are short on cash, and it probably doesn’t help that your ‘sketch comedy’ group ‘UCL Graters’ (real creative name, by the way) keeps haemorrhaging money at every Mully’s show. This is exactly what happens when you let the Left manage public finances.
Let us know when you inevitably stop publishing. We will print literally anything – such as an entire issue dedicated to the colour red (that no one has read) –anything but your typical wokey criticism of our glorious President and Provost Dr Michael Spence.
What you'll see on every group chat...
Humour & Satire
Cycle Rickshaws — the Good, the Bad, and the Bedazzled
Lauren Klieff Humour Editor
It’s the dead of night. Freshers week is finally upon you; after a long, listless summer. You drag yourself home, back from a club you don’t know the name of. It’s the dead of night and you are freezing. All is quiet as you brace against the rain, the wind pummeling your chest. From far down the street, deep in the inky void of the dark you can hear some noises. A dreadful cacophony. Gradually, you recognise it from your past: the sound of Katy Perry’s ‘California Girls’ is imminently approaching. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see light — no, lights. But it's not the hue of the traffic lights you have come to know, these lights are blue and neon pink and they are headed straight towards you.
The ghastly chariot is in sight now. It is more powerfully lit than an ambulance, but this vehicle is not here to save you. It brushes past you, ghosting the edge of the pavement. Katy Perry is upon you now and she is deafening. As the contraption speeds past, you feel the dead, damp weight of a feather boa soaking into your skin. It looks as if it came from the club floor, the feathers now matted with cobwebs and sticky debris...
This is a completely accurate account of the experience most freshers have with cycle rickshaws. Appearing out of the night and rattling down the street; taking up half of the street in the process. For most people, the 11 tube lines, infinite buses and the omnipresent lime bikes are more than enough to contend with. Adding another transport method into this? A transport method as loud, fluffy and potentially illegal as this? Inconceivable. Maybe it’s my hatred of LED lights speaking, but I needed to know more:
• Who is actually using these?
• Where do the drivers find decor that hits the perfect balance between skinned muppet and bedazzled roadkill?
So I got on my bike and went to hunt down some answers. I had to take a moment to shrug off any bitterness about the amount of space rickshaws take up on cycle lanes. Half an hour later I was deep in their territory, in the depths of Covent Garden - a distinctly un-garden, unnatural sort of place.
Unsurprisingly, I saw two rickshaws and their drivers immediately. They were kind enough to indulge my invasive questions. Turns out that most passengers are from London, not tourists. This is pretty shocking, considering that pedicabs are best known as tourist scams. Perhaps an
unfair perception but a pervasive one; somehow making it into King Charles III’s first speech to parliament. It's even more shocking that Londoners would voluntarily step foot onto such a colourful transport system, with most locals dressing in so much grey they almost outdo the pigeons.
Having got the insider information, I scurried away from Covent Garden. Whilst I’m still a bit jaded by the volume of rickshaws on my commute (in terms of both their quantity and sound), they’re a tad demystified now. Perhaps next time you hear 2014’s greatest pop hits hurtling towards you at night you can relax, maybe even throw them a couple of pom poms. Or perhaps not. The primordial fear of seeing LEDs brighter than the sun at 2am is enough to give anyone cause for concern.
As for the decor, I heard from both ends of the spectrum. One driver rented his rickshaw and the hot pink fluff was part of the deal. Presumably it's been super-glued on there since the rickshaw was manufactured and will long outlive us all. The other driver decorated his bike himself, scooping up the detritus from a hen party and successfully wrangling all of their neon yellow pom poms. Apparently, he’s able to redecorate fairly often: it remains unclear if this is more a testament to his work ethic or the number of hen parties clucking around in Soho.
◀ Figure 1: Anatomical diagram of the modern rickshaw
▼ Figure 2: I chased this guy for five minutes and he immediately left his bike when he stopped
JEZZA B’S BRAT SUMMER
Hi Gang!
Jeremey Bentham here, or should I say Jeremey BRATham?!
It's true, it's true! I’ve had a Brat girl summer!! Inspired, obviously, by UCL-almost-Alumnus Charli, I’ve spent my summer popping that all over campus!
Highlights for me included lines with the odd looking lions outside the provost office (man are those guys fun!) and my DJ set in the Petrie museum in July. Poppers with Egyptian Mummies are even better than poppers with the Beefy Shoreditch Daddies! And with my muscles relaxed I found my mind could explore new philosophical foundings, look out for my paper on the Utilitarian nature of Ket being published (subject to peer review) in November.
But as my Brat summer draws to a close, I find myself missing the hubbub of the student centre. Its felt too quiet these past months without all my lovely students. I miss their ceaseless chatterings, their crying, their hookups in the loos. Yes, I suppose it’s good to go feral for a little while, but to return to my quiet pondering in my cage sounds just what Charli ordered. Not quite cut out to be a 365 party girl - maybe just a 180 party girl... But wake me up to go again next year! In the meanwhile welcome back kids.
The SU Bars Quiz!!
UCL’s Union bars are the key to a good cheap night out in London. But have you ever wondered which bar you are? Simply answer the following questions below and keep track of your answer to find out! Izzie Moull
What's your comfort YouTube genre?
A. Fatal car crash Compilations
B. Shane Dawson
C. Buzzfeed unsolved
D. Gay coming out videos
E. 73 qs from vogue
What do you use in the shower?
A. Old spice
B. Wait, what's a shower?
C. Anything colourful
D. 5 in 1 shampoo
E. L'Occitane
What is your worst nightmare?
A. A bad pour of Guinness
B. Females.
C. The Tab picking up my scoop
D. Someone typing in “Am I G-” into my search bar
E. People finding out my Birkin is a fake
No outfit is complete without my…
A. Grandad jumper
B. Fedora
C. Leather jacket
D. Adidas sambas
E. Spritz of Chanel no. 5
What do you look for in a partner?
A. An appreciation of real ales and a dislike of loud noises
B. A failing olfactory system
C. Young. Like younger than me. Like A LOT younger than me.
D. SHE has got to be proper leng. With big tits. ‘Cus I like WOMEN!
E. An internship at JP Morgan arranged through Daddy’s contacts
Ok sure this isn’t actually an SU bar but let's be honest at this rate it kind of is. You have a bigger budget than the rest of your pleb classmates and bigger expectations from your boozer too. Like the majority of Court’s clientele, you are probably an international student (let's be honest, likely French) and most likely a bit obnoxious.
Mostly E: THE COURT
You, like this bar, seem to be made of two very conflicting halves. One part is the most aggressively straight rugby lad you’ll ever see and the second the most flamboyant gay around. One day you might reconcile them but for now you’re a walking red flag. Get help and stay away from women xoxo
Mostly D: PHINEAS
This can go one of two ways, you are -ei ther the coolest or the creepiest person anyone can ever meet. The odd mix of postgrads and lecturers combined with freshly 18 first years means you are either a) someone who sucks up to your lecturers or b) someone who browses porn by the “barely legal” category. For both of our sakes, let's hope you’re more on the cool side of this category…
Mostly C: IOE
In Horse Tranquilliser Induced Love, Jezza B IM Humour & Satire cheesegratermagazine.org/humour
You disgusting cretin. This place is only enjoyable hammered and even then it's only because of the karaoke. The stench of you lingers, you literally live in a -base ment. Get off Reddit and touch some grass in Regents or something xoxo
Mostly B: MULLYS
a bit weird. To be fair though you have a lovely warm and inviting vibe. You must love either a “propah pint” or just a bit of bloody peace and quiet.
tually old otherwise it just means you’re
An old soul. Which is fine if you are ac-
Mostly A: HUNTLEY
Humour & Satire
Puzzles&Games
Word Search: Bars & Cafes
By Seth Harris Puzzlemaster
How to play
Looking for somewhere to buy an overpriced muffin or criminally cheap booze? Well then look no further as 7 of the Union’s cafes and bars are hidden in the text below. There’s no prize, but drinks are now £2.80 on Wednesdays (allegedly) so we are all winners in a way.
Words may be hidden horizontally, vertically, or diagonally in either a forwards or backwards direction.
INSTITUTE GEORGEFARHA GORDONS HUNTLEY MULLYS PHINEAS PRINTROOM
Solutions will be uploaded to our website before the next issue
Cereal Box Maze
How to play
Quick – you're running late for your lectures – pick an entrance and find out your fate!
Zine
womenswrongs.cheesegratermagazine.org
Zine womenswrongs.cheesegratermagazine.org
A message from our Sketch Director Ben Scanlan...
The UCL Graters turbo-techno-schizo-anarcho Fringe blast! That’s right gang, this year the UCL graters took their sketch comedy show “Dreams you wouldn’t tell your mother” to the Edinburgh fringe! And it was a Freudian lynchian kafkaesque fever dream... Our ten day adventure included performing our show to spectacular crowds, subsisting on Wetherspoons tapas, and watching some questionable comedy shows. Come see our Fringe show re-run at 7:30pm in Mully’s on Oct 3rd! And hell... if you’d like to write or perform with us maybe join one of our sessions on Wednesday evenings? giggles shyly
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President — Lily Park
Editors-in-Chief — Nick Miao & Sirjan Narang
Investigations Editors — Malvika Murkumbi & Andrea Bidnic
Humour Editors — Lauren Klieff & Luke Melendez
Graphics Editor — Jasmine Yiu
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