Apathetic, uninterested, selfish, no community spirit and they just don’t care.  Some of the terms UCL students describe the rest of the mob here at Bloomsbury’s bastion of higher education.  Only last week, one chap told me “No one cares”, who seemed perplexed that I wasn’t as enraged as him “that UCL has over £1m in arms shares”.  Instead, rather selfishly, I was more pissed about the Union shutting down the Bedford Way café with no external consultation with any of the users.

Perhaps this underlies the lack of care UCLers have with their Union: by and large, they don’t care about us and we couldn’t give a cahoot about them.  There is mistrust and disinterest between the student body and elected officials.  “How depressing, how Heineken,” some of you may mutter in Phineas and the negativity beckoning from this page.  You love the Union: the cheap booze you’re downing, the 25p Guardian you otherwise wouldn’t be reading – what else really matters in the Union except these subsidised services?  This isn’t apathy, just reality of the student majority you hail.  Indeed, UCL students are far from apathetic: every Monday, my fellow columnist puts on debates, where over a hundred students voice their views on a whole range of issues; the Conservative Society has the largest student membership of any university in the country and the Volunteering Service has a strong army partaking in the most selfless of work.  Students get involved and do clearly have distinct morals and opinions.

Yet we look at our Student Union and see the opposite.  Elections where the candidate list is shorter than North Korea’s and an election turn-out, where one would imagine a typhoon, has emerged on Gordon Street, preventing budding voters getting to the ballot box.  Many committee positions remain unfilled and those that have been often seem as effective as the former Hartlepool Mayor: the local football team’s Monkey Mascot.

Mr Dedman, how could you? You may slurp snakebite in hand.  Hasn’t the Union got better this year: what about the lovely new student nights?  It’s true that most nights the Union actually has punters and some sort of atmosphere. However, there is so much more potential, which those planning to stand for office in the coming elections next month should realise.  Above and beyond is the need for real passion and for those who do want to hold the purse strings to look above the parapets of the endless committees and stupid bureaucracy and get the student body connected.  How, you snuffle whilst opening your forty-pence packet of ‘Monster Munch’, do you do that?  Look at Phineas and how it was designed over the summer: it looks like an NHS waiting room with a bar annexe attached to it.  Look throughout 25 Gordon Street and you see the relics of bad management: in Phineas, the empty canteen, as you enter on the left on the second floor, is Easy Js, once serving up finger licking burgers, now resembling Ali’s burger bar in Baghdad – a relic of a once prosperous past.

With the depth of talent we have here, why didn’t anyone think: the Bartlett design school and the Slade School of Art!  Let’s get someone from our Union rank and file to spruce up the place!  At least come up with the design ideas and colour schemes based on what the elected officers think best.  If you want purple, I’m sure there is a Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen in the Slade who could conjure it up.  The Union instead could have a competition for the best design, maybe even print the designs in this publication and have an X-Factoresque vote for the best one or milk it even further for what it’s worth and vote out the cackest ones weekly.  The Union could even utilise its website forum and debate the best design for Phineas rather than whether Robbie Swale (the Clubs and Societies officer) should shave off his bum fluff, which it is doing at present. 

Every student would have the opportunity, potentially, to decide how its Union will look and feel.  For the creative, they have the incentive to leave their mark on campus and have an extracurricular activity which helps launch their career aided by none other than the Union itself.  The Union would save money on external designers, even if it offered – and it should – a financial incentive for the budding Bowens in Bloomsbury.

As for bureaucracy within the inner workings of the Union, it is outdated, endless and time consuming.  For example, societies have to apply two weeks in advance to get approval to invite outside speakers.  Where’s the problem in that, you may snuff?  Well what’s the point?  The Union constitutionally cannot say no. It has to – and quite rightly so – provide a free platform to all.  So what, I ask, is the point in filling out a form for approval when speakers all too often pull out and confirm at the last minute for student events?  You may hark, “Security, in case some fringe nutter causes a ruckus amongst students.” A fair point, but wouldn’t it be simpler if you just had to give 48 hours notice and could simply answer a few questions online? The Union could glance at the names and flag any which may pose a problem and attend if necessary.  The Union should seriously consider developing eGovernment, scrapping the paper work, filling streamlined forms online, room and Union space booking online and being able to see what it is available rather than making requests blindly for rooms (which we do as Presidents) with no idea as to whether the rooms have been taken or not.  In other words, establishing the system already in place for academic staff within college.

The problem is lack of scrutiny and debate.  Wouldn’t it be good to end the restrictions on political party involvement in the Union? We could have Tory, Labour, Monster Raving Looney candidates and know roughly what to expect: a champagne Phineas bar for the Tories and cuppa soup café in Bloomsbury for the socialists.  We could even have our own political groupings, perhaps some based on the values of UCL: a Utilitarian, Libertarian and Social-liberal groupings of students.  If we did have political parties, there would be students in place who could actively scrutinise those who have been elected and hold them accountable.

As for the state of finances, I wrote last year of the benefits of privatising Phineas with a price wall so a company like Whetherspoons or Scream would definitely maintain low prices.  The rental income derived could go on subsidising Huntley Street, Easy Js, Café 308 and the Rockefeller which all make a loss, but still provide numerous students with subsidised sustenance.  This is what most students really want from the Union.  They come on campus to work, meet friends and use the Union as a service provider to make their limited income go as far as possible in as friendlier atmosphere as possible without evicting all the lawyers.  We can do tha,t but we have reduce student input in areas such as running the bars, hand them to entrepreneurial talent and use student innovation in tangible areas such as design and putting on events instead.