Navigating Challenges: Mary McHarg’s Presidency
Image courtesy of UCL’s Student Union & Mary McHarg
As far as ubiquitous campus figures go, Mary McHarg is definitely up there. As last year’s activities and engagement officer, and this year’s Union President, McHarg has made a priority of talking and brainstorming with anyone that wills, whether you are an undergrad, postgrad, professor, part of the campus experience team, Jeremy Bentham’s statue or just a passer-by.
Indeed, her friendly and approachable demeanour is one of the first things I noticed about McHarg when I sat down with her on a spring morning in the last week of term to discuss her time as Presidency. Driven by a seemingly pervasive and incessant call to duty, McHarg’s tenure can be characterised by an insatiable will to amplify student voices. ‘Let me talk to as many people as possible so I can get to know what their issues are’. Indeed, prioritising student engagement has often made it difficult to navigate campus in lieu of her other commitments - ‘like I've been late to meetings many times because of accidentally bumping into people’. In fact, our meeting, intended only to be a quick 30-minute chat spiralled into well over an hour, only ended in view of making McHarg late for her next commitment.
If you haven’t seen McHarg on campus, you might recognise her self-described, ‘wild’ haircut, characterised by shades of fluorescent purple. Described by her Union colleagues as ‘eccentric’, or at least thats what she thinks they think, she earnestly clarified ‘not in a ‘you’re fucking crazy’ kind of way’. If you have managed to escape McHarg’s on campus loquaciousness and are a subscriber to the digital NOMAD UCL experience, ‘off the grid’ and unbeknownst to your campus colleagues, then McHarg’s face will appear ritually at the top of outlook in a series of weekly emails – cementing her omnipresence.
Regardless of your campus politics or thoughts on the President, if indeed you have any, in ostensible contrast to another sabbatical, McHarg has got up to a lot. So much, that when her time as president comes to an end, an irreparable gap will need filling.
From overseeing Union finances (£10 million in funding) to pioneering the student life strategy and leading the Plant-based food initiative[1], this President has played an integral role within the Union. Perhaps McHarg’s greatest achievement comes as being the first student to represent UCL at COP28 this year. Though describing the experience as ‘crazy’, it did not come without pressure. Expectations of productivity challenged an ‘unfixed’ agenda, coupled with the uncertainty of being the first student representative from UCL. Yet, at ease in environments that prize interpersonal ingenuity, McHarg rallied rapport with the likes of former UNFCC secretary general’s and prominent biodiversity researcher’s. For McHarg, it was a welcome opportunity to make ‘really interesting connections with people that I had no idea I could talk to as a human’.
The Student Union’s ‘stingy’ reputation is known to many students, particularly those serving on society committees…. particularly treasurers. Whilst the £10 million operating funds might come as a surprise to many on the receiving end of Union’s often stringent and bureaucratic premonitions, to McHarg it represents just how great the operating task is of a student body of well over 51,000 students.
Living in London can be challenging and anonymous, especially with a university campus as big as UCL’s. Despite being the Union’s President and possibly the most social figure on campus it’s something that McHarg intuitively appreciates. ‘It’s easy to be lonely in the city’ and ‘it’s easy to feel lonely here at UCL’. I asked her about fostering a sense of community on campus, ‘it's hard to make every UCL student feel like you know I'm part of the UCL community’ or make ‘people feel like they're part of one group’ she replied. ‘It’s a lot easier to get smaller subgroups within that [UCL] and get people to find their communities there’.
The crux of her message being that becoming a part of the UCL community is made by being a part of your own ‘micro’ community, whether it be your course community, Sci-Fi society, Surf Club or Taylor Swift Society. In this way, UCL becomes a community glued together by its hundreds or even thousands of groups. A paragon of diversity upheld by a common shared identity. It’s this recognition for the extra-curricular clubs that has led McHarg to pioneer the Student Life strategy.
With the goal to persuade the university to realise the benefits and skills students learn from participating in Union, whether its drama production or being president of Muay Thai, it is hoped the initiative will increase the amount of funds allocated to the Union. Not only that, but McHarg is also pushing for students to be rewarded by the university for their participation. ‘Students [should] be able to get credit for their degree by doing co-curricular stuff, so like if you're the president of society I think that should be like worth of 15 credits’.
However, despite these achievements, it hasn’t always been plain sailing for the President. Behind the day-to-day veil of university life, according to McHarg UCL is a ‘brutally cutting bureaucracy’ that is ‘quite dense’. dealing with the University can be a lethargic and subdued process with ‘nothing making sense’. A particularly egregious challenge for McHarg, has been the new Freedom of Speech Legislation due to start in September. The new legislation would create a barrage of problems regarding potential ‘controversial’ speakers that may, if reported to the government handling body, bring fines – damaging to academic expression let alone Union finances. Reflecting on it, McHarg describes it as a ‘tangled mess’ without any ‘clear plan’. Yet with her familiar energetic and creative zeal, McHarg has educated herself on charity law in effort to ‘detangle’, despite her time as president coming to an end before the legislation even comes into place.
The Union has undergone a lot of change in recent years. And with McHarg challenging archaic university norms, like a hurricane blowing the roof off the old and tenacious structures, prompting novel ideas infused with her infectious energy, the university is becoming increasingly more sensitive to its students. For example, a review of university’s substance abuse policy which, at the moment includes a warning or merely ‘kicking’ the student out - omitting any support to help student’s go through whatever adversities are encouraging them to abuse substances - was, after months or dialogue between McHarg, the Union, and the university, initiated. ‘We're out of really good turning point in the university where the past few years we've been chipping and shipping away and getting the university to think a bit wilder about what we do and what students do and what's important to students’.
As for the Student Union itself, this year it has had to navigate several ‘scandals’ involving a number of societies. From the Conservative society ‘Port and Policy’ debacle that brought national media attention, to suspending the Marxist Society over a poster that had ‘potential to be considered incitement’. Now, the Gaza conflict has put the Union under increasing pressure. Indeed, as I write this, a group of students are occupying the Jeremy Bentham Room, with demands to ban societies from ‘inviting arms and fossil fuel companies from companies’ and establish an ‘Apartheid Free Zone on SU spaces around campus’. To face these challenges McHarg has insisted on an approach that seeks ‘consulting with as many people as possible… making sure you’re being empathetic towards the students who are involved’.
Regarding Student spaces, and the absence of a Student Union building, McHarg insists that ‘it’s hard to build a community if you don’t have a space for the community to meet’. As is familiar to many students, societies have to find places to meet all around the campus, from the IOE to the Bartlett without having a shared space for integration. Similarly, students don’t have anywhere on campus to come together in a single place. However, the President revealed that for ‘the past two years the Union has been working with architects’ to build a Student Union Building in the heart of the Bloomsbury Campus. It will have a proper venue for group performances, massive spaces for students to meet, and other activity rooms. She added that an announcement would hopefully be made by the end of her tenure this year.
As our interview came to an end, still as chatty as 90 minutes earlier, I asked McHarg what she planned on doing next. ‘I’m applying to a masters… in Art Education at the IOE…. maybe in 10 years, I'll be running a public arts programme somewhere or maybe working in like a gallery or a museum. Or maybe working in SU who knows?’, she said. ‘Hilariously enough, I can’t leave’.
[1] (much more can be found on her profile here),