Issue 50 – Autumn 2015
cheesegratermagazine.org
Absent Without Leave • • •
Government visa regulations force UCL to monitor students Departments complain of impossible workload Students slam uni’s readiness to enact ‘draconian’ rules
Bo Franklin UCL has sneakily introduced a new attendance policy that not only makes it harder to get away with sleeping through your 9am lecture, but is also giving departments a huge administrative headache. Any absence now has to be recorded and justified, and Home Secretary Theresa May is likely to blame. Although the changes have gone laregly unnoticed – mostly because lecturers aren’t enforcing them – this term students
are required to provide a satisfactory explanation for missing even one lecture, which in turn has to be approved by a departmental tutor. This has led to staff complaining about reams of paperwork, and a whole load of freshers wondering how easy it is to fake a doctor’s note the morning after sportsnite. Many staff have been left in the dark as to the justification for the draconian changes, which have drawn the inevitable Orwellian comparisons, but The Cheese
Grater has learned that it’s a result of increased government scrutiny of non-EU students’ ‘Tier 4’ visas. This has been an issue since London Metropolitan University had its licence to recruit international students suspended in 2012, after poor monitoring of attendance and participation left student visas open to abuse. UCL is coming under similar pressure, and university managers are turning to Stasi-style surveillance to reassure the Home Office. Continued on Page 3
2 Autumn 2015 The Cheese Grater
Down Your Union Norma de Plume
Apathetic Excuse for An Election UCLU’s Autumn Elections – for part-time halls and faculty representatives, the union’s delegation to the NUS conference and student members of the all powerful UCLU Trustee Board – have traditionally been, well, a bit shit. Despite enthusiastic publicity drives in recent years, spearheaded by the likes of former Democracy and Communications Officer Hannah Sketchley, turnout usually hovers around 5%. Regardless of the student body’s basic disinterest in what goes on at 25 Gordon Street beyond paninis and pitchers of snakebite, their apathy was never for want of effort on the part of keeno union hacks. So how to solve the many problems of student democracy? Well, if you ask this year’s cohort of sabbs, the answer would most likely involve not telling anyone about the democracy bit at all.
Turn Out For What? When compared to last year’s packed programme of workshops for the weird few considering a shot at elected office (see CG 45), publicity for this year’s Autumn Elections was virtually non-existent – beyond, that is, token mentions in the Union’s weekly email, which internal sources have revealed is now written almost entirely by a paid staffer, and not the sabbatical officers whose wisdom it purports to trumpet. The almost secretive conduct of the elections was borne out by their results: 16 halls of residence are now without representatives, and turnout for the student trustee elections – last year a precursor to the clubs and societies-led struggle to smash up the calcified bureaucracy of
the union – nosedived from 1053 to 326.
Unfashionably Late There were, however, no shortage of candidates – though those brave, foolhardy or bored enough to turn up to the almost facetiously-titled Election Results Party in the Quad marquee were well within their rights to think otherwise. Slated to begin at 6pm, confused attendees – among their number the election’s returning officer – were kept waiting for forty minutes before members of the sabbatical team including Asad Khan and Mohammad Ali belatedly turned up with friends in tow, eating takeaways. Results were then announced in a bizarre, piecemeal fashion, with no mention of overall turnout or detailed breakdown beyond who won.
Left For Dead What was clear, however, was that the once unstoppable UCL left, having lost many of its biggest beasts to the ravages of time, is now a shadow of its former self as far as electoral success is concerned. Its candidates were routed: even infinitely likeable IOE Bar quizmaster Omar Raii, fresh from his stint as External Affairs and Campaigns Officer, failed to win a spot as NUS delegate – something that would have been a veritable shoo-in in previous years. Indeed, the lefties were nowhere to be seen among the ready salted crisps, chilli rice cakes and wasabi peanuts of the results party. Many were privately furious at the lack of publicity, with one insider suggesting this was a deliberate ploy to ensure the union’s structures were filled with pliant allies of some of the current class of sabbs – many of whom were elected by landslides amid allegations of voterigging (see CG 48).
Society Bitch Nobody listens to the radio nowadays – and the Smashie and Nicey wannabes at Rare FM are acutely aware of their need to deal with the demographic timebomb. Everyone on their mailing list has received emails congratulating them on securing a weekly show, a fortnightly show, and no show at all. In other digital meeja newz, Atheist, Humanist and Secular Society President Keziah Conroy took to the barren comment section of Pi Online to warn of the “darker side of a brand new society”, the pro-life UCL Life Ethics Society – a society so brand new that they were submitting antiabortion motions to UCLU Council as long ago as January. Maybe Soc Bitch’s old flame, eternal fresher Gerald Hestwoff, formerly of this godforsaken rag, will sort things out. The shifty Welshman has leapfrogged several Pi heavyweights to nab the job of website editor-in-chief. This columnist never liked him anyway, and just has something in her eye, okay?
Answer Me This Alas, some things never change. As has been the case since Malcolm Grant was still provost, a brilliant year of democracy inaction began with an inquorate general assembly (see CGs passim), which – as these things have always done – ended up with professional nusiance and former postgrad officer Ben Towse taking Michael Arthur, who bizzarely appeared out of character as part of a Q&A, to task over pet causes from his well-thumbed outrage playbook, including tuition fees and living costs. No doubt the Provost finds some of the current sabb cohort’s seeming aversion to student democracy very promising indeed.
The Cheese Grater Autumn 2015 3
Tiers 4 Fears (Cont’d from page one) Last month UCL warned staff of an upcoming audit, which will involve UK Visas and Immigration “checking large numbers of student files for evidence that we have records demonstrating that students are engaged, and that, where this is not the case, we have followed up and recorded reasons”. The university insisted “We have to be able to show that students are attending but also engaging in their studies”. This has led to a scramble to start obsessively monitoring the movements of every single student, not just non-EU students, presumably to avoid accusations of any unfair discrimination. Lukas Wahden, a second year ESPS student, complained to his department that UCL was treating students like “semi-demented cash cows”, and that “the unchecked passing on of potentially sensitive medical or personal data is something that I refuse to consent to in the absence of… prior explanation of the new policy.” Lukas
told The Cheese Grater “As long as we meet our 70% attendance requirement for all of our assessed modules, the reasons for absences are none of the university’s business… The decision about whether an absence from class is justifiable lies with none other but the individual student and his or her academic conscience.” While students might worry about the sharing and recording of sensitive data, departments have it just as bad, facing an avalanche of admin in their efforts to monitor and justify all absences. Larger departments like Economics or SELCS will struggle the most, with one staff member even suggesting that the only realistic way to implement the new policy would be to employ someone specifically to deal with attendance. At the moment, the majority of absences are still going unchecked, as staff simply can’t chase up every single one. The changes have been raised at numerous meetings of UCL’s Educa-
tion Committee, made up of faculty big dogs and chaired by Vice-Provost of Education Anthony Smith. Each time, concerns were raised about “workload implications” for departments, and as recently as 6th October staff still had “reservations about the practical implications of the new requirements”. Despite this the changes were pushed through by Smith way back in August. Professor Smith told The Cheese Grater that “I believe this change will better enable us ensure that our students are able to study, and provide us with an early alert when they are not doing so, so we can offer them support at the earliest opportunity.” Whether or not lecturers will actually be able to enact to the new regulations is yet to be seen, but considering UCL had over 9000 students enrolled from outside the EU last year, the uni better have its excuses ready when the Home Secretary comes knocking.
A Good Haul for Halls Protestors Rent strikers have finally made UCL cough up. Ifor Ramsay UCL’s decaying halls of residence are as inhospitable as they are profitable – 2014 saw college make a meaty £12 million surplus on its less than salubrious portfolio of student accommodation, and according to a defiant missive from Vice Provost Rex Knight’s office to UCLU last year, are expecting their operating surplus to hit £16 million by the end of next year. After years of hiking rents by around 5% annually for reasons known only to the management’s accountants, Residences have finally had cause to dip into their nest egg. The 87 freshers unfortunate enough to
have been placed in one of the cupboardsized rooms in Edwardian townhouse Campbell West on Taviton Street last year had the added woes of being constantly assaulted by the noise of a thousand drills as builders tore the nearby Bartlett to pieces and sharing the complex with rats. In an uncharacteristic show of compassion from UCL, albeit one arbirtrated by a complaints panel, they have been each awarded a term’s rent in compensation (£1,368). Despite this victory for campaigners, it remains to be seen what will happen to rent strikers in other halls – some of whom were threatened with expulsion for withholding
Campbell House in happier times.
their thirty pieces from UCL Residences (see last CG) – including Hawkridge House in Kentish Town, which was almost entirely covered with scaffolding and plagued by almost non-stop building works for much of the year. An arbirtration panel is set to rule on the strikers’ fate next month.
Contributors: John Bilton, Maddy Comber, Bo Franklin, Chorlie Hayton, Ross Humphreys, P.K. Maguire, Jess Murray, Will Orton, Anna Saunders, Jack Redfern.
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UCL Kowtows to President Xi The Provost is mixing with shady figures - and we don’t just mean Prince Andrew. P.K. Maguire Mere months after the controversial merger – or takeover – of the Institute of Education by UCL, the former is already suffering the indignity of being used as a conferencecentre-cum-fiefdom for management. The latest recipient of a ceremonial gladhanding was Chinese president Xi Jinping – in town for his state visit – who, in a gig reminiscent of a fever dream, shared a platform on Bedford Way with college’s favourite rent-a-royal, Prince Andrew, and our very own ‘paramount leader’, Michael Arthur. The appearance raises more questions than it offers answers for London’s Global University. The visit was essentially a contrived celebration of the work of the IOE’s Confucius Institute – now annexed and branded, of course, under UCL’s year zero approach to their new outbuilding. The little-known centre provides advice and support to enable secondary schools to teach Chinese, and was taken over from the notoriously aggressive Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in 2012. Keen to play the statesman and perhaps eyeing a big-money secondment to one of Xi’s state-run universities, Arthur waxed lyrical: “The merger with the Institute of Edu-
cation has meant that UCL now houses the UCL IOE Confucius Institute, which is entirely in keeping with our global ethos and with the pressing need to support children in Britain’s schools in language learning.” Indeed, a need so pressing that UCL’s entry requirements lock out those without a GCSE in a modern foreign language – most of them state-schoolers. For those who do make it in having memorised their French oral, UCL’s foreign languages division has been decimated, merged and purged in recent years (see CG 24), and despite his internationalist rhetoric, the Provost has done little to improve the lot of the understaffed and overstretched department. Arthur’s keen enthusiasm to forge a healthy and lucrative working relationship with the Chinese government despite widespread criticism of their human rights record (like most of us, he obviously never read that Ai Weiwei interview in a 2014 issue of Pi Magazine) will come as no surprise to seasoned UCL axe-grinders. College’s keenness to cosy up to shady and potentially corrupt regimes across the world is positively Blairite (see CG 40): as well as a partnership with Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, an institution named after the country’s al-
legedly abusive and corrupt dictator, UCL’s proudly pointless Qatar branch has paid its female staff less than men and reportedly ignored the concerns of LGBT+ staff. Arthur himself told a student Q&A in October 2013 that the human rights record in these places is “so bad we would be deeply worried about associating ourselves with such regimes”, but only after a nauseating aside in which he posited the dewy-eyed claim that UCL’s trusty westerners would civilise the misogyny, homophobia and governmental corruption out of the nasty foreigners. So what gives? A telling answer from the same event appears to confirm suspicions that for UCL, the bottom line is, well, erm, the bottom line. “I think before we start making decisions about ‘this is bad, this is good’ we need to think about the totality. And China would be another example. It’s pretty simple, I don’t think we can afford to do anything else other than have a working relationship with a country as important as China,” said the Provost, having cited Guantanamo Bay as a get-out-of-jail-free card. In the febrile, marketised world of British higher education, money talks – and probably Mandarin at that.
Ban This Sick Filth UCL invests in your mum’s favourite racist rag. Paul D. Acher UCL’s controversial investment fund has millions of pounds tied up in mining firms, oil and gas, tax-dodging internet giants, and even the Daily Mail, The Cheese Grater can reveal. A copy of a report into the state of college’s nest egg, dating to July 2015, lays bare the extent to which management have taken on board the concerns raised by the ostentatious protests of Fossil Free UCL. Despite semi-naked undergrads covering themselves in oil and Michael Arthur and Rex Knight, UCL’s answer
to the Chuckle Brothers, clambering over students playing dead in front of the bosses’ basement lair at 188 Tottenham Court Road, the protests seem not to have pricked their consciences. 7.8% of the £133m fund is still tied up in energy companies and mining concerns – including oil giants Shell, utilities ripoff merchants EON, and loathed mining companies BHP Billiton and Glencore Xstrata, the latter of which has been accused of violating UN sanctions (see CGs 41 & 45) – and offer college decent and more or less guaranteed yields on safe in-
vestments, despite continued outcry from ever vocal campaigners. However, even if UCL were to follow the likes of Glasgow University and divest entirely from its dirty fuel portfolio, there are still plenty of corporate betes noires for campaigners to rally against. UCL has investments totalling a stonking £4,273,366 in internet giants with an aversion to tax – and in some cases, a history of inflicting sub-Dickensian treatment on its workers. 3.3% of the fund is invested in Google, Apple and Amazon, despite concerns over the
The Cheese Grater Autumn 2015 5 dot-com behemoths, who get away with handing over piddling quantities to the state every year. Those still hoping for Bentham’s egalitarian utopia to lead from the vanguard in the struggle against global capitalism are likely to be further disappointed by the depth and breadth of its
investments in banking and finance: college is betting a whopping 15.7% on good performances from the pantomime villains of the 2008 crash, including Barclays, HSBC, Citigroup and JP Morgan. Time to start spreading the word of
these nerafious dealings, right? Well, yes – but you can bet against seeing an upskirt shot of Rex Knight on the MailOnline’s sidebar of shame anytime soon. UCL owns £674k’s worth of shares in the Daily Mail & General Trust, publishers of that paper and website you pretend not to enjoy.
Mary Berry The horror of a name that almost rhymes. Victoria Sponge I am sitting opposite Mary Berry in her kitchen. Why? I can’t remember. She looks at me across the table with her piercing blue eyes. Is that hunger I see in them? Fear? Loathing? Why don’t you try the Battenberg cake? We need to fatten you up a bit.” The cake sits on the table between us, glistening. Did she bake it? Did I? I look down. I’m dressed in a pink shirt, halfway undone. A fresh scar crosses my chest. I look up. Mary is holding a fistful of Battenberg cake in front of my mouth. “Open wide.” I chew. “It’s a bit dry. I can feel it falling apart in my mouth. I think you over baked that.” Did I say that?
“Ooh yes, very good. Now -” A woman walks into the room holding a parcel. “Mary, this arrived for you -” A flash of fuschia. “GAAAAAH.” Mary is panting, her nails streaked with blood. The woman is crying as the four gashes across her face weep onto the floor. “What did I say about interrupting me? Get out of here, Perkins.” Mary picks up the parcel as the woman crawls away. “I’m ever so sorry about that, where were we? Ah yes, the procedure…” A man in a white lab coat walks in, brandishing a needle. “Perfect, my afternoon pick me up.” The man wraps a plastic belt tight around Berry’s
raging bicep, then pecks and hunts for a vein for several minutes, as she pumps her fist furiously to get the blood flowing. Berry turns away from me. The needle plunges into her forearm, and she throws back her head. A scream of carnal pleasure rings out. Some spittle lands on the table. It dissolves. She turns back to me. “Now as I was saying, we’re ready for the final stage of the procedure. We had to track these all the way from India, quite the hunt but it’s part of the fun.” Her eyes glint wildly as she passes me the parcel. “Why don’t you open it?” I open it. I stare. A pair of icy blue eyes stare back. “Now, we’ll just pop these in, and then I think you’ll be ready for some promo shots, wont you, ‘Paul’?”
Now Hive Seen It All! Worker bees, united, will never bee defeated. Pollynate Toynbee After the Prime Minister’s infamous ‘pigate’ incident, another leading politician was caught in a situation stickier than honey recently. He might be the bee’s knees, but Twitter was abuzz earlier today after socialist worker bee Jeremy Corbeen was seen beehiving badly at his local apiary. Islington beekeeper Roger Beasley remarked that after the Labour leader’s visit, the bees were ‘beeing strange’ adding that ‘they’ve only gone and formed a beeafide union!’ showcasing how Labour policy would affect local honey making beesinesses.
The Labeeor beeder faced further criticism last month as he snubbed the Queen Bee by failing to appear at privy council, and buzzed loudly throughout the national anthem. Fellow Labee Parbee MB Beeane Beebot shrugged off the ‘unbeelievable’ bee-legations against Corbeen, saying that ‘Corbeen is not a bumbling beediot, bee was berely beexibiting his beersion of kinder, gentler beeolitics’. Bzzter bees bee bzzzt beeblic bee bzzzzzzzzzzt.
Jeremy Corbyn pictured trick or treating in Islington, earlier this week.
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No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Talk About Feminism and Modern Cinema
Spectre (2015)
Daniel Craig gives a truly SAVAGE interview. Pusswah Galore Following the release of new Bond film Spectre, I tracked down alpha male Daniel Craig for a oneto-one for UCL’s avant-garde arts review, SAVAGE. I ring the bell of Daniel Craig’s luxury apartment complex in Regent’s Park. There’s the sound of static, then haggard breathing issues from the intercom. ‘Mr Craig? It’s William, from Savage? UCLU’s premier Arts and Culture Journal? We spoke on Tumblr.’ The intercom wheezes again, and the gates swing open. ‘Guide me, Aldous’, I whisper, and step inside. Daniel Craig is dressed in a homely M&S sweater, duck-egg shirt collar peeping out of the top. He seems to have forgotten to put on trousers. A Rizla paper is stuck to his left thigh, and he has kebab meat behind his ear. I begin by congratulating him on his distaste for Bond’s misogyny. ‘Well that’s bollocks, for starters’. Daniel takes a swig from a Carling can, then pours the rest onto his dog. He leans towards me, his eyes
dulled, breathing into my face. I can smell Monte Carlo and Pot Noodle. ‘I just said that so the bloody women’s libbers would get off my back. I couldn’t fucking care less about how Bond treats the girls, as long as they keep giving me shower scenes with them.’ He giggles a hoarse, throaty giggle, and spits ash in my eyes. I use my sketchpad to hide my erection. ‘I fucking love playing Bond. He’s the man men want to be and women want to be with. Don’t you dare mention anything about other sexualities or I’ll nut you. Do you know how much skirt these films get me?’ He coughs up a thong and shoves it into my face. I smell Morocco and lady ejaculate. Daniel Craig is staring at my chest, slowly cleaning his thigh-Rizla with a moist finger. ‘That’s a nice shirt’, he whispers, sucking baccy from his nail. ‘For a ponce.’ I try to ask him to review my oneact play, but he grows bored of me and starts to masturbate. I wait in polite silence, but leave after thirtytwo minutes. I bump into Rachel Weisz in the doorway. She calls me a knob and I cry.
Daniel Craig and Mads Mikkelsen enjoy the latest issue of UCLU’s Art’s and Culture Journal.
Been a fan of Bond ever since my uncle called me a fag and forced me to watch the entire collection back to back after I told him I liked Austin Powers. Thought this film lacked the banter of the Roger Moore era. Now he was the premium Bond! Craig sulks too much, Belucci is too old and Moneypenny is too black. 3/10 -Huzzah! This picture was thoroughly bombardier. Most verily, this was a gem of intricate cinematographic finesse; the onomatopoeic gunshots were a delight guffaw! I was enthralled by Daniel Craig’s riveting portrayal as the troubled hero as struggling to come to terms with his own ability (and also inability - quelle dommage!) The film is a synecdoche for the relentless pugnacious nature of Man. Locke once said that... [review continues for another 12 pages] ...before Sam Mendes concludes this epic with a fitting ending. Bond dies. (Spoiler alert!) 8/10 -I arrive at the theatre after reading the trusty online reviews. My palms are sweaty with excitement, my legs are shaking, my eyes wide, ready for cinematic stimulation. I take my two seats. I fill my mouth hole with popcorn. Salty. Crunch. Lights fade. Bond appears. I slurp down my coke (diet, no ice; shaken, vigorously). The camera zooms in on Bond’s face. Popcorn again. Now it is sweet. My head spins. Craig looks at the camera again. His brow is moist with vengeance. The music starts blaring. I begin to vibrate in tempo with the music. My eyes haze over. I can basically taste him. Then the wonderful words spread across the screen - NOW IN CINEMAS. I relax. Now I’m ready for ‘Minions’. 10/10
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LMAO Ron Hubbard
Excruciating Circumstances Wrecks Night Gone are the halcyon days of claiming a “family emergency” to get out of doing the Spanish oral that crept up more unexpectedly than the Inquisition. UCL’s revised set of extenuating circumstances now mean that “exam stress, financial problems, accommodation problems or domestic problems are part of the everyday reality of being a student” [Heavyhanded satire, even for us - Ed.] and all claims must be processed by the monolithic shitstorm that is College’s centralised bureaucracy. All forms must be submitted in triplicate, signed in the blood of virgins and have prior papal approval when claiming “acts of God”. What your uni is saying is this: If you really want to push back that deadline, you better up your excuses game, shitstain. The affable professor who previously gave you another week to submit your essay after he forgot it was due will soon feel the full force of University College London; he will swiftly be black-bagged
and replaced by a cyborg facsimile. Say au revoir to the days of departmental autonomy and reasonable expectations of students; prepare for tight deadlines and instant fails once TurnItIn ticks one second past the hour of reckoning. This isn’t Kansas anymore Dorothy, and you’re absolutely fucked for that Spanish presentation mi amigo. Sure, you might have builders drilling five feet from your bed in halls – but that’s just a normal part of student life now, much like shitting in the shower and overdosing on Modafinil. Who cares if your parents and the trolls under the bridge at Student Finance have conspired to leave you destitute, struggling to choose between paying the rent and buying alphabetti spaghetti to shovel straight into your quivering mouth? Even domestic problems like the inability to hear the words “in this essay I am going to write” in your own head over the sound of your sister throwing a kettle at your mum is just part of the modern student experi-
ence. Think of it this way: if Carol Vorderman managed to push through the crippling existential dread and doubts about the future to come out with a third – not to mention going on to win Rear of the Year twice – then so can you. Think your Nan’s death will guarantee you an extension? Only once the body has been examined by the UCL High Medical Council, as well as being personally inspected by the Provost to make sure she isn’t just faking it or having a really long nap. You might cry yourself to sleep every night, and your diet may consist solely of Sainsbury’s basics lager, but you still have to sit that exam mate. Under the new regulations, medical problems will now only constitute double amputations, with proof having to be provided in the form of the severed, disintegrating limbs – bagged and labelled. Probably best to wave goodbye to your arms if you’re behind on your dissertation. What are you waiting for? Chop chop!
8 Autumn 2015 The Cheese Grater
Sent From My iPhone Or, ‘Why Your Mum Doesn’t Love You’.
5 Minutes With Rex Knight After the success of Michael Arthur’s Dream Diary, The Cheese Grater sits down with the Vice Provost.
UCL Union Cheese Grater Magazine Society President—Jess Murray Editor—Bo Franklin Investigations Editor—P.K. Maguire Humour Editor—Maddy Comber
president@cheesegratermagazine.org editor@cheesegratermagazine.org investigations@cheesegratermagazine.org humour@cheesegratermagazine.org
© UCL Union, 25 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0AY. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of UCL Union or the editor.