Issue 85 - Freshers 2023

An Introduction: Something of a Welcome to The Cheese Grater Magazine

Robert Delaney

Welcome to The Cheese Grater, UCL’s only pro-dairy magazine run in part by a lactose intolerant co-editor-in-chief.

I, Robert Delaney, (the lactose intolerant co-editor, alongside the lactose tolerant Mads Brown) want to take this opportunity to both explain what The Cheese Grater is (as the name is slightly misleading) and to let you know a bit about what we got up to last year.

So, what are we, what in heaven’s name do we do, and why should anyone join - or care - about The Cheese Grater? I’m not entirely sure how to answer any of these FAQs, but I’ll try my hardest.

The Cheese Grater is somewhat of a broad church; we have a sketch-comedy group, a satire division, a feminist zine and an investigations branch - so there’s always stuff going on and places to be.

With our investigative journalism and our independent anti-authoritarianism, we are essentially the antithesis of an institutional media outlet. Our raison d’etre, be it as investigative journalists, satirical feminists or sketch participants, is to hold to account those in positions of power (or at least try) whilst still having a bit of fun. Think of us as being a bit like Private Eye, but if Private Eye was run out of an office the size of Harry Potter’s hovel under the stairs in The Philosopher’s Stone.

Now, I want to share a bit about what we got up to last year. All things considered, 2022-23 wasn’t all too bad for The Cheese Grater. Whilst we may have struggled to publish as many issues as we would have liked, the work of our outstanding journalists certainly did not go unnoticed.

We’ll start in Glasgow, where The Cheese Grater was nominated twice at the Student Publication Awards, a national award ceremony for student journalism. Whilst our co-zine Women’s Wrongs came up short, Neil Majitha and Elettra Plati’s investigation into initiations won Best News Piece of the Year. The initiations story, which is on our website somewhere, was not only an extremely well-researched and conducted article, it also dealt with the sensitive nature of such heinous rituals in a way which could only be commended as right and proper!

Back in London, we stole the show at the UCL Arts Awards. Alongside the plethora of colours and arts awards given to our journalists, contributors, and researchers, Women’s Wrongs finally got their welldeserved recognition, being dubbed UCL’s Best Publication of the Year.

The revival of the feminist zine by Disha Takle and Anna-Maria Papaoikonomou, alongside their dedicated writerbase, saw both the fostering of a wonderful sub-community within The Cheese Grater Society and the publishing of brilliantly relevant feminist literature, critique, and satire.

Once more at the Arts Awards, Neil and Elettra saw recognition for their brilliant work on initiations, winning Best Media Piece - I shan’t go into any more more detail as I’ll end up repeating myself, but well done to you two.

With many victories last year, and a few defeats (mainly the hangovers after The Cheese Grater’s 19th birthday) I want to thank Nandini Agwarl and Samir Ismael for their unwavering service to the magazine last year as editors-in-chief.

On the note of commendations and victory, we were recently featured in a new exhibition in the Portico for our service to the student community since 2004. Our feature proves that, despite the fact we shit on UCL a lot, they love us really.

Last year was successful for The Cheese Grater by most metrics. I hope to see the publication continue improving, and I look forward to seeing what we will produce during the 23/24 academic year.

To conclude on the sweetest note of them all, last year saw us adhere to the final sentence of section 4.3.1 of The Cheese Grater Constitution, which for those of you not versed in constitutional law, reads:

‘The Magazine shall be better than Pi Magazine.’

So, I think we did a decent job.

When and where you can find us:

Monday 6pmInvestigations (Lewis Building 105)

Tuesday 6pm - Satire (South Quad Teaching Block 102)

Wednesday 6pm - Sketch (South Quad Teaching Block 102)

Thursday 6pm - Zine (South Quad Teaching Block 102)

Last Year in UCL Accomodation: From False Claims to Halls of Flames

Mads Brown

One Pool Street. Sorry. Let me get my megaphone out, you’re just so far away. ONE POOL STREET! The pride and joy of UCL’s new Stratford campus: UCL East (officially opening Sept 2023 for all you freshers out there). Building works on One Pool Street were completed in Autumn 2022 (this is, in fact, a complete lie), ready for students to move in on September 22nd. Or so they thought. Thanks to Rebekah Wright and Thais Jones, The Cheese Grater uncovered some of the rubble surrounding UCL’s newest student halls.

Allow me to set the scene. It’s August 2022. A cardboard box in the corner of your room is filled to the brim with useless kitchen equipment from Ikea; Eve Bennet’s ‘What I Wish I Had Known Before University’ video drones on in the background; you toss a limited assortment of “going out out” clothes into a messy heap on your floor.

*PING!* An email from UCL!!? Addressed to you? Goodness, how thoughtful. You feel incredibly special (it’s not like every other fresher received an identical email).

The fateful day has arrived, it’s time to select your accommodation preferences. You glance across to the box overflowing in the corner. Sigh. Select ‘self catered’. Form completed, you forget about it momentarily and head out to WHSmith to hunt down coloured sticky tabs.

Little did you know that you’d selected a mystery option, with a number of potential outcomes that ranged from ‘mildly disappointing’ to ‘must lug dirty clothes from Kensington to Ramsay Hall every week to use Circuit Laundry’.

You may be cursing your filthy kitchen now, but at least you have flatmates to make a mess (seriously though, please take out your bin, it’s disgusting).

By the time late September rolled around, One Pool Street was still not ready for students’ to move in. Though it may sound like a life of luxury, students assigned to hotels across London were deprived of the sense of community which student halls provide. Relying solely on group chats to figure out who their future flatmates might be, these students were filled with uncertainty and felt completely isolated.

Though they may have had a comfy hotel bed to curl up in every night, as opposed to the slabs of concrete found in UCL halls (get yourself a mattress topper), these students were deprived of cooking facilities. No need for the heap of utensils piled up in that cardboard box, some students didn’t even have access to a microwave.

Alternatively, those students who did make it through the golden gates of UCL halls, otherwise known as John Dodgson, were lucky to avoid food poisoning. Interviews conducted by Rebekah and Thais revealed that only two out of five fridges actually worked, and the extent of filth and mould not only began to affect the students’ physical health, but also their mental wellbeing.

Though they were not charged any rent for this period of time, UCL’s errors in communication, poor organisation, and lack of understanding certainly cost students the fresher’s experience they deserved

Whilst the residents of One Pool Street were nice and cool on the Lizzy Line, just 45 minutes away, the students at Ramsay were dodging flames.

There are certain things that you don’t put in the microwave. I once saw someone heat up an M&S chicken salad sandwich in the student centre. Criminal. Most of us remember when we figured out that metal does not like to be microwaved. Some people choose to ignore this scientific fact. Namely, one 19 year-old arsonist, who decided it would be a genius idea to put a kettle in Ramsay Hall’s microwave. It caught on fire.

If Ramsay Hall is known for anything, it’s fire alarms. Yes, Ramsay residents of 2023, you will have to look your situationship in the eye as you stand there, freezing, in your Winnie the Pooh pyjama set and llama slippers at four in the morning. It’s for the best. After all that, you would think the alarms worked. You would be wrong.

According to one survivor, the fire alarm didn’t initially go off. Despite months of training, students did not evacuate, but instead took pictures as their kitchen filled with plumes of potentially life threatening smoke. Oh, and flames. I’m starting to see why so many UCL students are Oxbridge rejects. Eventually, someone told reception, and the whole of Ramsay was evacuated to enemy territory (Astor College) for, and I quote, ‘like 7 hours’.

I would say this is a once in lifetime occurrence, but that would only be true if you were nine years old. If you search ‘Ramsay Halls Arsonist’, you’ll discover that ten years ago, a student at Ramsay Halls attempted to commit arson by placing steak on the stoves of three first floor kitchens. Yes, steak. You think they’d be able to afford better accommodation.

Anyways, good luck to the 2033 cohort of Ramsay Halls... I fear this may be a ten year curse.

Rental Roulette: UCL’s Rising Prices and the Student Accommodation Crisis

Rebekah Wright and Nick Miao

To protect anonymity, some interviewees in this article have been given pseudonyms from the musical Rent.

London is famously the most expensive city in the UK. A decent standard of living can cost up to 58% more than in the rest of the country and if you’ve ever lived in UCL halls or private rental accommodation you’ll know that the word ‘decent’ can be used very, very liberally.

The London rental market has spiralled into exorbitance, as eleven London boroughs have seen rent soar by over 30% since 2021. More recently, the director of SpareRoom has said that the market has ‘reached a point where it’s not really working for anybody.’

But all of this overshadows an equally severe crisis in student accommodation. Unipol, a student housing charity, has described the situation as at a ‘crisis point’ and the National Union of Students (NUS) described the student housing market as ‘broken’. Meanwhile, the higher education think tank HEPI warned that, ultimately, student homelessness would increase as a result of the cost of living crisis.

UCL students are forced to face skyrocketing rent prices both in the private rental market and in UCL halls, where the average room price has risen by 44% since 2016, consuming a sizable chunk of a full student maintenance loan.

The newest UCL hall, One Pool Street (OPS) at the UCL East campus charged £254 per week in 2022/23 which has risen to £282 a week in 2023/24. One resident, Mimi, told The Cheese Grater that living in OPS was not worth the rent charged. ‘[It] isn’t as expensive as ensuite rooms at other halls like Astor’, she acknowledged, ‘but we had the cost of travelling’.

The dramatic hike in rent at OPS does seem particularly unfair given that it’s in Stratford, a 45 minute commute away from Bloomsbury. Seemingly the management at UCL accommodation neglected to consider that the majority of students who still study on the main campus will also have to pay significant travel fees to TfL atop their rent. Mimi estimated that commute money for her was ‘easily well over £500 for the whole year’.

Alongside the travel fees, Mimi also mentioned that the OPS’s distance from every other UCL hall made it ‘harder to socialise’. That, coupled with ‘the single beds and tiny rooms’, meant that the £254 a week she paid for her space was disproportionate to how much she valued it.

‘Everything at OPS annoyed me. I hated it all – especially the commute,’ she told us, ‘I paid to live in halls, so why am I doing a longer journey than (some) people who live at home?’

Despite the disadvantages of OPS for students who study in Bloomsbury, UCL has still raised the rent by almost £30 per week since 2022. UCL’s rent increases are also disproportionate to that of other student accommodation providers. Rent increased by an average of 11% in UCL halls between 2022 and 2023 but Unite Students, the largest provider of private student accommodation in the UK, only raised rent by 7%.

It’s evident that rent prices were raised dramatically by the UCL administration, particularly from 2022 to 2023. However, whilst some increases may come across as too substantial for what the accommodation is worth, it is true that UCL are not entirely to blame, as rent increases do seem unavoidable in the wider context of Britain’s housing crisis.

Still, most students rely on student loans, part-time jobs and support from parents or guardians to fund their time at university. The escalation in UCL accommodation prices adds an extra squeeze to the wallet of a student living in the UK’s most expensive city.

This is easily observable as the average rent in UCL halls fails to meet the NUS standard for affordable accommodation, which is set at under 55% of the full maintenance loan. In an internal SU briefing on the cost of living obtained by The Cheese Grater, the Union notes that, as of 2022, the average cost of rent in London would ‘consume 88% of a full student maintenance loan’.

For students that are struggling with wellbeing, whether that be due to accommodation-related issues or otherwise, Student Support and Wellbeing (SSW) is relatively well publicised at UCL.

When we asked Mimi if she knew who she could turn to if the stress of essentially being a commuter ever became too much she was well aware of the wellbeing support on offer and named the two student advisors from her course. Another student we asked, Joanne, also said that she was ‘aware of the wellbeing officers’ available at her hall.

However, both Joanne and Mimi knew far less about the financial services offered by UCL. Mimi told The Cheese Grater she was ‘vaguely aware because [she has] friends who are financially supported by UCL’ but that she had ‘never heard about it from any official UCL sources’.

UCL Accommodation say they can ‘arrange a payment plan’ if you’re struggling to afford halls. UCL also has a Student Funding Advisor, a financial assistance fund and the SU’s Advice Service (amongst a few other schemes) for students struggling with financial issues.

One might be inclined to think, though, that such services pale in comparison to the enormity of the renting crisis. No matter how well-intentioned, a payment plan or an employee at the student advice service are (understandably) not going to fix the debilitating effects the threat of homelessness and the inability to pay for other necessities is going to have on a UCL student who can’t afford to live in halls.

It’s no surprise then, that in the SU’s survey obtained by The Cheese Grater only 13% of students thought that the UCL’s financial assistance facilities are adequate enough to support students through financial issues. Renting doesn’t get much easier living outside of halls. For UCL students, this means entering a market that is stacked against them. As the NUS has said:

‘Landlords view students as fair game for exploitation as many have little to no experience of renting, creating a toxic power imbalance which leaves students with little control over their living situation’.

In order to glean the impact of flat hunting in London’s wild west housing market, The Cheese Grater also spoke to a number of UCL students in private rental accommodation to discuss how flat hunting had affected them and shaped their educational experience.

The students we spoke to found themselves insufficiently informed throughout the process. There is guidance offered by the university and the SU, such as housingadvice.london (a comprehensive online guide published by UCL).

However, these are often poorly marketed, with one student telling us she only found out about the University of London’s Housing Week after it had taken place. Another student, Angel, didn’t realise there was guidance at all, saying: ‘I thought it was a fend for yourselves scenario’.

Evidently the experience of flat hunting as a student must have felt more like being in a gladiator ring with lions than an organised part of adulthood. Angel added he felt ‘out of [his] depth’ and ‘certainly not that well informed’ when he first started looking for private accommodation. This suggests UCL needs to do more to promote its housing help, especially because a lot is already available. If it’s not publicised, it’s not aiding students and it just becomes wasted.

Maureen, an international student with no prior experience in renting tells us that she and her flatmates were ‘lost’ for two months as they ‘didn’t quite know what to expect’. Seemingly, UCL also needs to create more material dedicated specifically to helping international students who have no prior exposure to the UK housing market.

One option UCL does have available to international students is the Rent Guarantor Scheme in which UCL acts as guarantor in place of someone in the UK. However, Maureen explained that most landlords were having none of it and demanded that she instead paid 6 months’ rent upfront.

Whilst UCL’s scheme is well-intentioned and with the potential to be very useful, students will only be protected if landlords will accept it. Having to fulfil the steep ask of 6 months’ rent upfront is yet another financial pinch on UCL’s international students who already have to pay so much more in fees.

Ultimately, UCL students described how all-encompassing the process was. Another student, Isabel, told us that ‘this is what I have been doing, all day everyday. I constantly have Rightmove and Zoopla and OpenRent open, calling immediately when things come on, and I’m already like number 25 on the list of people requesting a viewing.’

Flat-hunting in London clearly takes an exhausting toll on UCL students, particularly because many start around the end of exam season when they are already very busy. This is a problem unique to UCL as the issue of finding accommodation at universities in other cities typically comes much earlier in the academic year. Rightfully exasperated, Isabel decisively told us the market was just ‘insane and horrible’.

Trying to flat hunt alongside doing anything else - exams, internships, working or otherwise - whilst trying to maintain any sense of wellbeing seems almost impossible. Another student, Lewis, described the situation as a deeply ‘stressful experience’, akin to ‘a full-time job’. The experience of flat hunting clearly overrides the educational experience to the point that during flat-hunting season, studying at UCL is completely overshadowed by the distressing experience of actually trying to find a place to live.

Living in London has always been expensive, but Isabel tells us that she never expected things to get this bad when she first moved here five years ago. Back then, she said, ‘I looked at the people who pay £800 [pcm] for a room and was like, oh my god, they’re so rich [...] they’re so close to uni and they have the best room. And now I’m begging somebody to accept me paying £1,000 [pcm], of which I’m paying 6 months upfront, to let me live anywhere.’

There’s certainly no exaggeration in this. Even the director of SpareRoom, Matt Hutchinson, was shocked by the skyrocketing rents on his own website, with a room now averaging £971 a month. In an interview with the Standard, Hutchinson said, ‘It wasn’t that far back that, when we got an ad for £1,000 a month, we sent it around the team and went: “look at this, it’s so expensive, who’s going to pay that?” Now it’s the average.’

Finally, The Cheese Grater had the opportunity to get a comment from Lucas Dastros-Pitei, the 2023/24 Students’ Union Accommodatio n and Housing Officer. He explained that he was ‘disappointed’ by the latest rent hikes and ‘understand[s] that the cost of living is causing plenty of issues and is leading to higher rent prices’.

Lucas clarified that ‘the financial assistance fund exists to aid undergraduate and postgraduate students who are estranged from family, have caring responsibilities and/ or suffering from financial difficulty due to the cost of living crisis. UCL can award students in these groups with up to £3,000, a quarter of the full London based maintenance loan!’

In terms of the private rental market, Lucas told us that he knows ‘people take advantage of students (especially internationals) through scamming’ and that ‘in order to achieve a more equitable renting landscape, [he] believe[s] that bringing back rent control could protect tenants and students from excessively high rents and regulate landlords.’

We can only hope that the government soon comes to share Lucas’ view as there is no other way to put it: London has become prohibitively expensive. Faced with the very real threat of homelessness or selling your left kidney to live in the equivalent of the Student Centre toilets, it’s understandable why so many students feel that living in the capital is a never-ending scam for anyone who doesn’t happen to be a squillionaire.

UCL Accomodation is obviously not responsible for London’s soaring rent prices, but that doesn’t mean they can’t provide more help for students affected by them. UCL’s own rent increases are significant and whilst financial support services are on offer, the Union’s own surveys demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of the student body believe they are inadequate.

The university needs to better pro mote its housing assistance resources, especially for international students, and explore more affordable housing options. Addressing these issues is crucial to ensuring that students can pursue their education without the overwhelming burden of high living costs.

Voices: M.A.B. We’ll Get Our Marks Back Some Day

Elettra Plati

On 20 April 2023, the UCU’s Marking and Assessment boycott began and after a long summer in which you may have spent too much time staring at your half-empty grade transcripts - anything more than a m inute would be too long for such an activity - it finally ended 139 days later on 6 September 2023.

The UCU – University and College Union – represents over 120,000 academic staff members across the UK and is currently involved in a pay and working conditions dispute with UUK (Universities UK), and in a pensions dispute with UCEA (University and Colleges Employers Association).

The University and College Union demands an improvement of the newly reformed pensions scheme and a fair pay rise that reflects the rapidly growing inflation rates and the cost-of-living crisis.

Resolved on 6 September, the MAB affected any mark that contributed to the decision on a summative grade. Modules affected by the MAB missing a grade were considered neither a fail nor a pass, though if the grade is still missing the relevant module credits are not registered as completed.

While this uncertainty has, understandably, caused growing anxiety amongst students, adjustments were made as to minimise distress. and no student failed a module because of a missing grade.

All students who were affected have been able to progress to the next academic year, despite technically not having the required 120 credits registered as completed. Fortunately, now the MAB has ended, missing grades will slowly, but surely, start to be released.

Still, many students were anxiously stuck in grade-limbo for almost five months and it will take some time for the final judgement to be made on all missing papers.

The uncertainty and absence of communication surrounding the MAB led to students voicing contrasting opinions on the issue, with some more than others growing increasingly frustrated at UCL and even at striking professors. A second-year Law student stated that whilst they ‘completely understand what the teachers are fighting for’ the MAB didn’t make sense as they are ultimately ‘hurting students.’

While some students might feel as if they were (and still are) unfairly punished by the MAB and their professors, it is important to maintain clarity amidst distress.

Strikes are a last resort even for professors themselves, who often lose part of their pay for partaking in strikes, and who are very aware that students will inevitably get hurt but are left no other choice

A third-year Geography student admitted to The Cheese Grater that their frustration comes down ‘not to the staff and the work that they’re trying to do, but to UCL as a whole’ for refusing to get through the issue effectively and instead let students suffer its consequences.

Compassion for professors and anger towards UCL grows rapidly when one learns that UCL is working on a surplus, but decides to invest their money elsewhere rather than granting fair pay to the staff.

Some students expressed how projects such as UCL East sometimes feel like a ‘distraction tactic’ by UCL. They simply turn their heads (and money) elsewhere and neglect existing issues such as underpaid staff.

Moreover, there has sadly been a lot of misinformation, and students’ opposition to the MAB often stemmed from this lack of clarity. A common misconception is that UCL is not directly responsible for determining pay rises which are handled by the government.

Upon learning that UCL is responsible for their employee’s pay and working conditions, a third-year Law student affirmed that refusing to increase wages is ‘pretty stupid [of UCL]’, admitting: ‘I can’t really think of anything right now that I feel would be a good alternative to the boycott.’

Another student has reacted to this information by admitting that the whole situation has made him think of UCL as ‘quite greedy’, and while he – like many of us – doesn’t know the ins and outs of UCL’s financial situation ‘[I] can only imagine them making a lot of money.’

Professors are aware of the harsh consequences that students are facing and have worked hard to minimise the effect of the MAB on the student body. Within the History department, some striking professors privately informed students of their grades before the boycott ended.

Although these marks were not moderated nor released and were therefore provisional, students were still able to gain some sense of stability amidst extremely stressful circumstances.

A third-year Law student concluded that, despite the obvious frustration, he remains ‘in support of industrial action on the whole […] because the staff are worth more than what [UCL] pays them’. This view seems to be the prominent one amongst the student body.

Ultimately, while they might disagree on the means, students generally seemed to support the aim of the MAB and recognise, perhaps reluctantly, that there are no alternatives.

Students have also recognised that whilst the MAB has been the strike that has affected them the most – compared to the teaching strikes, where the untaught syllabus content was simply removed from the exam papers – this boycott has also been the most impactful and successful in its aim.

A third-year student suggested that UCL themselves did not anticipate ‘just what an effect [the MAB] would have’, as this boycott probably ‘caused more disruption than any of the strike action ever did.’

The MAB – like all the other teaching strikes this year – was a cry for help. As students faced frustration due the temporary absence of our grades, academic staff still struggle due to an unjust absence of money. And unlike the MAB, poor levels of pay don’t have a legal expiration date by which wages have to be increased and the pension scheme improved.

Successful strike action implies collective action: in critical times like these, we must come together to advocate not for what is best for us individually, but for what is just.

Additional reporting

by Ishita Jainer

f

Dear Editors In Chief,

I have heard, through many a confession to my embalmed body, that you students seemed to be very stressed about people stealing food from communal fridges. Personally, I’d recommend adapting my Panopticon™️ design, a perfectly utilitarian solution to your troubles. Simply place the fridge in question in an area where everyone can view it at any time; the street outside the front of your flat should do nicely. Then, install one way glass on all the windows so it is impossible to tell if you are being observed stealing from the fridge. The threat of being watched without knowledge should soon foster an environment where the culprit is too scared to steal. Bonus: you can now go fully nude in front of your windows.

In utilitarian love, Jeremy Bentham

Dear Diary,

I told you back in September that I was quite shocked that only 3 of the 5 of my flatmates had gone to private school. But daddy is always going on about how refreshing it is to live amongst those less fortunate than us and I thought I’d give it a try. But he always described it like my volunteering at that orphanage in Africa I did on my Gap Year! THIS IS NOT THAT!

It’s all been such a shock, but I just literally cannot believe how often they cook! It’s at least twice a day! There is a plate from this afternoon in the sink and two pots on the draining board, like are they animals or something?!?!?! And its everyday too! Sure, the arrangement of the plates change but there’s always something there! PLUS, the fridge is full of these little boxes with the food they made yesterday in, it’s seriously disgusting!

I just don’t get why they’re cooking so much? Like why aren’t they just eating out like I am? I’ve tried encouraging them to do it more, but they just glared at me and said “Tilly not everyone can afford that” in a really HORRID way. Is this like some cultural thing that I don’t get? I really think that daddy should have let me put a higher budget on the accommodation form like I asked for! UGH! I hate him sometimes!! Like I’m literally at my breaking point!! I can’t deal with this anymore!! Minty lives in Gardens so I might go stay with her for a bit ANYTHING to get out of here!!!

XOXO Tilly

All I Wanted Was Some Pesto: The

Annual Student Migration Takes Its Toll

Move in weekend here in London has clearly exacerbated the already delicate situation that Lidl experiences on a Sunday morning driving it to breaking point. Although Local communities had already urged their residents to avoid the area after days of increased pressure and tensions in the aisles many seemed to not take heed to the warnings issued causing mass overcrowding and forcing the store to declare a state of emergency this Sunday afternoon.

One warning issued by UCLSU commented on “potentially dangerous overcrowding” and “low stock potentially sparking hostilities in the aisles”. This certainly proved to be the case for many as Harriet Hurll told our on the scene correspondent.

“They all arrived at once, the security guards couldn’t cope. I saw a middle-aged woman beaten over the head with a basket by a fresher over the last pack of AA batteries. Someone tried to separate them but then they both turned on him. At one point someone came over the tannoy declaring:

“EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!”

At least that’s what I think they were saying. It was quite difficult to hear over all the screaming…This extreme situation is still understood to be ongoing and has the potential to last well into freshers’ week as more students arrive into the area. The Met are warning those in the area to proceed with their weekly shop with extreme caution and to consider alternatives where possible.

What Halls Are You???

Now you’re here and you’re all settled into your ‘cosy’ room you might be wondering is this really the right halls for my vibe? If this building were a person, who would it be? Would I be friends with this building??

Well look no further. Simply answer the following 5 questions and keep track of the number of A, B, C, & D’s you get to find out!

1. Why did you want to go to UCL?

A: Well, Tarquin my older brother came to uni in London and said it was a riot and not nearly as expensive as everyone said

B: Well loads of like really cool Alumni have been, like did you know Coldplay met here?! I think it’ll be a really cool place to express myself artistically

C: I didn’t get into Oxbridge and didn’t want to go that far north.

D: Academics. I want to push myself and get a good degree at the end of it.

2. What do you want to experience in London first?

A: The nightlife. If I’m not clubbing every single night, then this degree isn’t worth it.

B: Shoreditch. I need to meet some like minded artists who can be in my next band

C: The Elizabeth Line. Oh, to feel that sweet smooth purple train gliding underneath central London is all I’ve ever wanted.

D: The Local wildlife. I’ve heard about Parakeets and urban foxes I can’t wait to find out what else I’ll see!

3. Can you cook?

A: Oh god no. Matteo, mummy and daddy’s private chef, normally did all that for us

B: I mean, sort of? But I’d really rather not. In fact, I’d pay so I don’t have to

C: Yes, but I need good quality appliances to rustle something special up

D: Yes. I can cook and I don’t mind sharing my food with mice.

4. You have a 9am seminar. When will you leave?

A: I won’t. Mummy and Daddy don’t really care how well I do they just want me at uni.

B: 8:45 If I’m on time great if not oh well I don’t have to go to everything.

C: 7:30 I need rush hour to experience my learning the right way: depressed, exhausted, and reeling from the stench of some man’s armpit.

D: 8:59. nothing important is said until like 15 minutes in anyway.

5. What level of student squalor can you tolerate?

A: Squalor?? Not for me. No thank you. Daddy will pay to make sure I don’t experience anything like that.

B: I mean a fair bit. It is student living after all. All I ask is that I don’t have to wash up or see anyone else’s washing up.

C: I mean I’d rather not. Like student mess I can deal with, but the hall needs to be clean and modern.

D: I will literally put up with anything. I have no standards and no self-respect.

Mostly A: Gardens.

You have standards and are prepared to pay for those standards to be upheld. You’re a social sort, meals together with your mates are the highlight of your day. You would be the one to organise a tennis tournament in the halls with your VERY large group of relatively wealthy friends.

Mostly B: Ramsay.

Yes, we know Coldplay went to UCL. Yes, we know they lived in Ramsay. Please shut up now. You’re artsy. You think living in a dilapidated adds to the ‘vibe’ you’re cultivating. It’s you putting up all those flyers about looking for a guitarist for your band all over campus, isn’t it?

Mostly C: One Pool Street.

You can take the excitement of central London, but you need a moment to yourself at the end of the day. Your love for the tube overpowers your love for sleep. You are 100% a morning person.

Mostly D: John Tovell (Hovel).

You must be mentally falling apart because this place is too. You delight at wildlife. Even if its Rats, Mice, and feral pigeons. You don’t mind a bit of tough living just as long as you can stay at the student centre ‘til 4 am and only have a 2-minute walk home.

Society Bitch: The Bitch is Back with a Bang!

Oh, you poor gossip deprived students. I bet you missed me. And with such a large break from when you last heard from me, we have a lot to recap.

First however I feel I must clear my name. Although I may be Soc Bitch, I certainly do not participate in beauty contests, let alone host them. Whatever Zuckerberg wannabes were the creators of last year’s “UCL Bitch” website clearly realised that not all UCL students are as vain and vapid as the women’s netball team. Certainly, like some mean girls deleted scene, all these plastics cared about was ranking the attractiveness of the SU election candidates and tarnishing my Bitch name in the process. Hmph. Expect to hear from my lawyer.

Speaking of netball teams…

Already the society with the roughest reputation, somehow UCL Mens Rugby have managed to sink even lower into their grave of monstrous mistakes. For those with their noses not quite close enough to the sweaty scrum stench, you may have missed out on last year’s tale of terror.

Being forced to socialise with both the Rugby and the Netball teams might seem scary enough to us normal folk, but add in the threat of a rugby social sec with a firework and even KCL students would be smart enough to realise the danger. The sanity of said social sec must be questioned here, but let’s face it, when you hit your head in enough scrums you might just become stupid enough to let a firework off into a crowd. Let’s just say the night ended with a bang, an eyepatch, and an ambulance.

But finally, EFS, again. Tut tut, making me speak your name once more. It seems the bitch-al ball (patent pending) was correct in predicting its tattered future. My underlings (Bitchettes if you will) gossip that the EFS president paid off students on WeChat to vote for him. Some brains were obviously involved this time as he managed to make them members in time to vote.

Is being this corrupt and slimy a requirement to get in or something? It is surprising that it wasn’t one of the questions asked in its now infamous committee interviews! Better try again at learning how to hide your tracks EFS, they do say third time’s the charm.

This Soc Bitch can’t wait to see all the juicy morsels of gossip that slither their way out of freshers week this year. Here’s to hoping for some fresh faces as the current cast of slippery socs and stupid social secs is beginning to get a bit repetitive. Or maybe I’m just hoping the rugby team will act like normal human beings for once in their lives.

Welcome freshers, and good luck to the rest of you miscreants.

Avoiding a Knockout: Advice from a UCL Dropout

Lauren Kleiff

If you are thriving and full of enthusiasm to take on a new academic year; congratulations on your relative stability! Please relish in your optimism, which is a true strength for someone subjected to life in London in 2023.

Retaining positivity whilst hanging about the squalor of your £315 a week house share should be considered a superhuman ability. Unfortunately, this article is not aimed at you, you scholarly, well adjusted heavyweight.

This is for those who feel unprepared to step into the ring, which is probably the majority of people reading this. Tragically, life doesn’t stop because you need to prepare for university.

Therefore, whether you’ve been working so long you still hear phantom tills beeping in your sleep, struggling to sort things out with your family or dealing with enough friend drama to fill at least 5 group chats and 2 burn books - there is a very real and potentially dangerous possibility that: You arrive at UCL as an absolute mess.

And that’s ok, as long as it doesn’t leave you knocked out and feeling completely defeated, like I did circa November 2022. Having arrived at UCL messier than a landfill, I found it difficult to do much of anything. The longer I went without sorting out my problems, the more they spiralled into each other.

Eventually, I woke up one day at 1pm with spaghetti on my floor. I am unsure how it got there. As I was frantically scrubbing the tomato sauce out of my carpet in a desperate attempt to get my deposit back (I succeeded btw), I realised I had reached a critical mass of mess.This was my knockout. There was so much I needed to sort out for myself, it was impossible to continue studying and I submitted my application to interrupt by the end of the week.

However, I am now ready to come back for round two and able to use that experience to make a hard-hitting article (literally, due to its boxing theme) on how to avoid getting to that point. So, for those moments when the Portico columns feel like prison bars and Bloomsbury is more like a boxing ring than a second home, these are my recommendations of things you can do for yourself to finish the bout, clinch first year and ideally avoid my spaghetti encrusted fate.

1. Explore your accommodation

Assuming you are a fresher living in student accommodation, this is basic but legitimate advice. The kitchen is pretty straightforward - you’d be a bit hard-pressed not to find it. But the other facilities? They can actually be a bit of a struggle.

I was in Ian Baker and the common room was shared with Ramsay. Ramsay is a massive, panopticon-esque prison complex. The building is so large in fact, that it requires signage throughout to direct the hapless souls who are damned to navigate Ramsay’s labyrinthine structure. Much like a modern day Theseus, except the Minatour is the anguish of your surroundings rather than a physical creature. Needless to say, I was put off entering and instead opted to meet people in the kitchen.

Other common rooms can be equally formidable. The one in John Adams is tucked into a crevice so far removed from the residents that the word ‘common’ should be removed from its title altogether. Study rooms can be equally hidden but are also of great importance. Trust me, you’ll want to know where it is when the student centre is inevitably full and you are desperately scanning all the nearby cafes for a table. So please, look around your accommodation. It’s definitely worth it. Even if you live in Ian Baker.

2. Get some sleep

After the seemingly endless summer break, your sleeping schedule might be completely ruined. This is understandable, but not ideal during freshers week where you will likely want to be feeling your best. Living off scrounged sleep can make it challenging to speak to the singles, queens and kings on campus, because you’ll probably need to find them in mattress form instead.

Speaking of, the nature of freshers week goes against every single action you can take to be well rested. Alas, already university scheduling is fighting below the belt.

Endless activities at night vs inductions and yet more activities during the day makes downtime limited. Connecting with new people and keeping up to date on what’s happening next means that you spend a lot of time on your phone. These are not bad things, they just make it difficult to have time to look after yourself. If at any point you start feeling tired, ill or generally not right, take time off to actually get some rest.

I promise, the DMs are never that serious, you’ll know how to answer them tomorrow and having a strong immune system to fight freshers flu is more important. Get some sleep before sleep sucker punches you.

3. Escape Bloomsbury

The area around UCL and most of its student accommodation can be A LOT. Surrounded by colossal grey (beautiful, but still concrete and a bit bleak) buildings, buzzing shopping areas and a sea of fellow students, it can get overwhelming very quickly. I made the mistake of staying around the area, never straying from zones 1 / 2 and trying to power through. This resulted in me having a crisis in late October because it had been a month since I’d seen a ‘proper tree’, I then left my accommodation at 2am in search of said proper tree and ended up halfway across London.

Tip: don’t do this, it is not a good look.

Instead, I’d recommend making TfL work for you and going some place where you can really lose yourself (either in a relaxing way or more likely, in the genuine

Hampstead Heath, Brockwell Park and Dulwich Park are all lush if you can make the trek over; avoiding the borderline homicidal pigeons, the equally homicidal London crazies and withstanding the infamously sweaty tube to do so. Whilst it’s Autumn and there’s still some modicum of sunlight, it’s an ideal time to go and scout nice places for when you need a break from the Gower Street gloom.

Hopefully, this advice should help keep you fighting fit and throwing academic punches. Both stable and able to enjoy your time at uni, ready to defeat all the rounds of challenges thrown your way. You have more strength than you know; even on the days when you feel like the underdog, you still have a mean uppercut. Prioritise the things which keep you happy (even when life and your own thoughts get in the way) to stay UCwell and out of feeling like UC-hell <3

Resident Male Feminist : Lads’ Holiday Edition

After failing to organise a lads’ holiday last summer, the boys and I were determined to see it through this year. Visions of poolside cocktails, beach club raves, borderline dangerous episodes of heatstroke and excessive alcohol consumption filled their brains.

Meanwhile, I was more concerned with how I was going to fit all my pairs of Birkenstocks in my tiny carry-on suitcase. We booked our flights with Jet2 and we were off on our way to Mallorca.

I know what you’re thinking right now.

“How can I call myself a feminist, yet accept to go on a lads’ holiday in one of the most heteronormative and patriarchal travel destinations, which focuses solely on instant gratification and meaningless sexual encounters?”

Well, I went there to reclaim the space.

So I put on my sustainable yet iconic “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” tee (in a meta-ironic way) and my eco-friendly tote bag filled with kale chips and my reusable water bottle, and stepped into the all-inclusive hotel in Magaluf.

As we marvelled at the sea’s rhythm and the What It Is (Block Boy) (With Kodak Black) remix, we raised our glasses of fruity gender-neutral cocktails, because me and my mates aren’t scared of drinking our sex on the beaches (Although Mark kept complaining it was “too sweet” because of his patriarchal embedded mindset).

We passionately debated whether Bondi Sands sunscreen was just a pawn in the capitalism game where companies trick women into thinking they need tan-activating ingredients in their overpriced, and unnecessary, sunscreen.

I may have some tiny flakes of dead skin on my shoulders but that was only because of my mistake of not loving hard enough, not because I should’ve been wearing a tinted SPF 50.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, my mission to educate the lads took a hilariously unexpected turn. I approached a beautiful woman in a JADED LDN denim bikini, ready to eloquently discuss the male gaze, while my friends muttered needless apologies – of course I’d never approach a woman unless I could tell she really wanted me to.

She said she was also on an “ironic” girls’ holiday and asked me out on a date to a natural wine bar in Hackney Wick, as she giggled. I blushed and told her that (respectfully) I’m not looking for something serious at the moment, but let’s see where the summer takes us.

She leaned in to kiss me as I remembered I have a girlfriend. I panicked but then immediately relaxed when I realised I’ve previously said it’s feminist to actually cheat on your girlfriend. I made out with Ella passionately as my boys cheered. Not in a “objectifying women” way, but more in like a “celebrating respecting women and valuing true intimacy as an act of social justice” way.

In a twist of irony, I later found myself caught in a fierce beach volleyball match against a team of athletic women in micro bikinis who embodied my idea of gender roles in real life.

While the boys couldn’t stop making comments about their bodies, I ignored them and played the game, until I got too frustrated. I had to remove myself from the situation because I simply couldn’t take this sexism anymore! Some may say that was our first lads fight…

The rest was history.

With the holiday drawing to a close, I returned home sporting a sunburn and a new perspective.

Amid the gravitational pull of Magaluf’s beaches and its legendary nightlife, my attempts at sparking feminist consciousness on a lads’ getaway proved to be both hysterically misguided and utterly frustrating. Sometimes, a lads’ holiday isn’t the battleground for feminist enlightenment – after all, even the most “woke” of us can’t resist the allure of bottomless cocktails, impromptu conga lines, and the endless possibilities of lads’ holidays.

2023

RMF Summer Checklist

(RMF is a feature in our affiliate Zine, Women’s Wrongs)

Fleabag, TikTok and The Revival of Cultural Feminism

Soraya Odubeko

The 21st century feminist has most likely seen Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. Perhaps they have praised it for its unfiltered and incisive examination of the modern-day trials of womanhood.

The character of Fleabag – like the rest of us – has a complicated relationship with feminism. Although, in my adoration of the show, I cannot claim to be different from its other devotees; I am acutely aware of its status as scripture of the ‘sad girl’. The ‘sad girl’ that I refer to was forged in the fires of Tum- blr, niche memes and now TikTok. She is characterised by a deterministic indulgence in her own suffering, one that stifles any emergent political possibilities.

There exists a tendency among young women to reify womanhood and, importantly, to attach suffering to this professed womanhood. I am far from the first person to discuss this particularly defeatist revival of cultural feminism amongst Gen Z, driven by social media – particularly TikTok.

In Rayne Fisher-Quann’s ‘standing on the shoulders of complex female characters’, she critiques the notion of a feminine essence constituted by suffering: “young women are conditioned to believe that their identities are defined almost entirely by their neuroses”. The sad girl espouses a gender essentialism that equates womanhood with pain, ultimately relegating us to the realm of Nature – or the body.

I think this essentialism is evident in one of Fleabag’s most notable and purportedly feminist moments – Belinda’s monologue. In this monologue, Waller-Bridge’s writing, whether she means to or not, recalls a kind of ‘difference’ feminism better transcended. It is a feminism which, all too often, reinforces a historic dualism; woman is to nature what man is to culture.

Here Waller-Bridge’s presentation of spiritual suffering as contrapuntal to physical, bodily suffering reflects a traditional nature/culture binary:

“Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny – period pains, sore boobs, childbirth. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. Men don’t. They have to seek it out. They have to invent things like gods and demons… they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other… and we have it all going on in here. Inside, we have pain on a cycle for years.”

My issue with Belinda’s monologue is best expressed by Ursula K. Le Guin when discussing Tenar, the protagonist of her Earthsea series:

“But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior—women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light.”

The discourse of Nature/Culture tells us: “Men are Enlightened. They produce and maintain control over the metaphysical, the intellectual, the technological. They invent ‘gods and demons’ and ‘wars’. Everything that isn’t bodily is a result of their production. Men invent; women feel.”

This dichotomy is fleetingly implied by Waller-Bridge in her suggestion that women’s suffering is corporeal, stemming from the natural. Contrastingly, men are associated with invention, suffering because of their choice to cultivate cultural forms that exist separately from the body.

There are two aspects of the sad girl framing of female pain which I want to critique here: its necessity, and its corporeality. I do not want to delegitimize the practically unavoidable pain caused by period pains, childbirth, and sore boobs but to perhaps suggest that the figure of the ‘strong independent’ woman – now derisively referred to as the ‘girlboss’ – has been rejected by some in favour of the similarly one-dimensional sad girl.

Proponents of the ‘sad girl’ aesthetic like to appeal to some ‘feminine essence’. This femininity is invariably aligned with pain, suffering and rage (cue the TikToks featuring Pearl, Amy Dunne and the Lisbon sisters).

My issue with Belinda’s monologue is not the recognition of female pain, but that it is presented as being grounded in the body alone, whilst men’s pain is seen as grounded in the spiritual. Similarly, I enthusiastically support young women expressing the suffering that they have incurred by virtue of being a woman. However, to be a ‘sad girl’ flattens, it is an identity which has suggested that women are constituted by their pain. The task of deconstructing the ‘sad girl’ becomes a task of deconstructing the notion that women are a known thing, that this known ‘thing’ is suffering, and that women are the body and men are the mind. We can then see ourselves as more than our “neuroses” and our ailments.

Involuntary patron saint of the ‘sad girls’, Mitski, has outwardly rejected her relegation to a realm of perpetual sadness: “The sad girl thing was reductive and tired 10 years ago and still is today. (…) Let’s retire the sad girl shtick. Sad girl is over.” Additionally, the removal of Fiona Apple’s music from TikTok last year was speculated to be her reaction to the co-optation of her music in the service of this narrow conception of womanhood.

Like Le Guin’s Tenar, the protagonist who declares she has “lived too long in the dark”, Apple and Mitski shake off the straitjacket which labels them as nothing more than sad.

Given that the unfounded outrage of ‘gender critical’ feminists presents an increasingly alarming obstacle to the feminist movement, it is vital to continue deconstructing gender essentialism and cultural feminisms. The distinctly racialised figure of the sad girl also proves to be counterproductive in the building of an inclusive feminist movement.

Why must women stay down in the dark, wedded to the infantilizing notion of our predestination for unending pai n? I certainly reject that women are necessarily attached to their suffering, and this should be the starting point

UCL Graters at Fringe: How 17 Days in Edinburgh Proved that Life is Indeed a Comedy

Euan Toh Yu-Yuan

The Cheese Grater’s Sketch Group take their annual trip to the Fringe Festival, accompanied by a Singaporean who has never travelled this far north of London before. This is his eyewitness account…

August 4th

Right off the bat, we’ve had a bad start. The coach we paid for was supposed to have a table and legroom. Instead, we got relegated to a smaller bus and we were squeezed right to the back. I sat between Lauren (our resident Canadian and sketch coordinator) and Ben (our resident clown and lame-duck-newly-elected-Lauren-replacement for when she graduates). The ride was about 10 hours long, and was soundtracked by the club music blaring from the phone of the girl sitting opposite us. We were a little worn down by the time we crossed the border.

One of our members, Alex, opted not to ride with us, but took a train instead. In hindsight, he made the comfortable and intelligent choice. He’s also the medical student of the troupe, so, on paper, he should be the smartest among us.

August 5th

Us 8 members of The Cheese Grater’s Sketch group are staying in a flat rented out by PhD student Rob Davidson, a lifetime member of the society. However, he is performing his own play with a whole batch of Graters alumni, and they are staying in the same flat as us too. This means we have 14 residents in a flat made for 7 people. I won’t call it chaos … but it certainly feels tight. The idiot landlord has also scheduled a few flat viewings just to piss all of us off that little bit more.

August 7th

Something bizarre happened today. We had a poor turnout for our sketch show. Rather than bitch and moan, a few of us watched a show by Julia Masli, a professional clown who married the latest winner of Britain’s Got Talent. When she walked out with a bell and drolled a low “ha… ha…ha…” to start her performance, I knew it was going to be good. Never before did I think I would be so entertained watching a clown make a fool of themself, and everyone else. The Clown had impressive improvisation skills, you could almost see the mechanisms in her brain churning as she attended to each and every audience member… She also drank yellow piss about halfway through the show. Truly inspirational.

During the show Julia asked one of the Graters, Will, about what problems he was facing. He spoke about our attendance predicament , telling everyone about how nobody had bothered to turn up to our show. Julia told him to promote the show to everyone in the audience right there and then.

Will: UCL Graters present a free sketch comedy show, 6 p.m. tomorrow at Brewdog Lothian Road.

Right at the end of her show, Will was on stage with Julia, with the pair inching closer together. Julia then asked: are we going to do it?

Will made out with the married woman in front of a sold-out audience. We have it on video.

August 8th

The political journalist Iain Dale moderated an interview with two potential charlatans, so Ben and I sat in a room for an hour listening to two old people complain about British society. Afterwards, I had the blessing of actually speaking with Dale face-to-face. This was his career advice to me...

Dale: I recently told a 31 year old colleague that she is so young, she can still afford to make mistakes on a career transition. Whatever you are interested in, build a portfolio of long-term interests and show that you are serious about being a part of that professional world you seek.

August 9th

Today I discovered that flyering is not an easy task. My strategy to gain the attention of prospective audience members was to wear a plastic rat mask and pull out all the tricks from the Filthy Frank playbook. I went into full method acting mode, perfectly personifying a rat on the streets of Edinburgh. I did whatever it took. Breakdancing, begging, crawling, saluting and contorting in front of large crowds just to get attention. A fellow method actor, dressed in a Darth Vadar outfit, broke character just to take a photo of me as the Rat.

August 14th

Today was interesting, we watched a show called ‘A Young Man Dressed as a Gorilla, Dressed as an Old Man, Sits Rocking in a Rocking Chair for 56 Minutes and Then Leaves’… (yes, that is the full title of the show). It is exactly as it sounds. All the performer did was rock a chair while the crowd heckled him, and that was the point. All in all, the show went a little like this…

Random American (heckling): Take off your top!

Ben (to Random American): Don’t objectify him! (Crowd laughs at Ben’s comment)

August 16th

The 30 minute walk across town to our performance venue was so boring that The Graters started playing “I Spy”, adult edition (see example below).

Euan: I spy something that begins with the letter C (castle)

Somebody: Cunt!

Somebody else: Climate change!

August 19th

We performed our last show today and it went incredibly well. We had a really responsive full house, and a reviewer came (albeit a weird one)! An older woman, who turned out to be the reviewer, joined us halfway through the show (pretty unprofessional if you ask me) and looked stern the whole time, only breaking her stone cold facade for the occasional applause. I didn’t like her.

August 20th

On the train home I thought about all the insane encounters I had with comedians, clowns and journalists in Edinburgh . This trip blessed me, reigniting a spark within me to achieve more with my life!

As for the sketch comedy, I feel confident saying the Graters have our own absurdist, non-sequitur style that other universities we watched, for lack of a better phrase, are impotent of. In conclusion, The Graters are an invaluable representation of the arts at UCL... so please give us an Arts Award or at least a nomination. Pretty please.

Answers to “UCL Halls or Scandinavian Prison???” (No Cheating

c) Halden Prison, Norway

b) Kumla Prison, Sweden

a) Ifor Evans (UCL Halls)

How many did you guess correctly?

x)

f) John Dodgson (UCL Halls)

e) Halden Prison, Norway

d) Schafer House (UCL Halls)

President - Zhenya Robinson

Editors-in-Chief - Robert Delaney and Mads Brown

Investigations Editor - Rebekah Wright

Humour Editor - Izzie Moull

Online Editor - Hia Sadho

president@cheesegratermagazine.org

editor@cheesegratermagazine.org

investigations@cheesegratermagazine.org

humour@cheesegratermagazine.org

online@cheesegratermagazine.org

a)

b)

c)

d)

e)

f)