Aria Xingni Shi. Photo courtesy of Students’ Union UCL
Earlier this week, Pi reported that Aria Xingni Shi, the incumbent Activities & Engagement Officer, had been in breach of election rules for plastering campus with posters without a sufficient English translation. Despite this rule break, and a subsequent 48 hour ban on campaigning, she has just succeeded in her re-election bid and will remain in her role for another year.
Aria is on the record saying she is ‘too lazy to be energetic’ in an interview with the Cheese Grater – proven by her not even bothering to turn up to the results announcement on Friday afternoon. She has made almost no appearances on union social media pages all year, with SU President Mary McHarg (last year’s Activities & Engagement Officer) seemingly left to pick up the slack that Aria is self-confessedly too lazy to do. Last year you could hardly go a week without seeing Mary on the SU’s Instagram page – you would expect Aria to take up this role, but you could probably count her appearances on one hand.
Aria is now going to pocket another £30k of SU money for doing nothing for another year. In her election manifesto for last year’s leadership race, she said: “If elected, I will establish leisure lounges and sleeping pods on campus, schedule more spaces and funding for clubs and societies, promote engagement across different campuses, promote end-of-year career fairs.” Absolutely none of this has been achieved in her year in office, and worse yet, none of it is present in her re-elected manifesto, except for a continued push for a ‘napping zone’ – arguably the least pressing item listed.
Societies need someone who will champion their causes. Virtually all of the other candidates ran on campaigns with pledges such as simplifying communication with the SU, increasing funding for TeamUCL and artsUCL support staff, and bettering integration with UCL East. Anyone who has been involved with any sort of society this year knows how much effort is involved with room bookings (even when CMISGo is working – a rare occurrence!), managing inadequate storage spaces and finding equipment for practices or rehearsals. Yet all of these candidates lost in favour of someone who believes a napping zone and £2 bubble tea are what students really need.
It's not just yours truly who isn’t happy about this result though. A candidate running against Aria during the election said that they hoped the winner would be ‘anybody but her’, and one newly elected sabbatical officer, who will be working alongside Aria next year, said, ‘it’s a bit suspicious that she was re-elected, don’t you think?’. Her future colleagues questioning the validity of her election win doesn’t exactly instil confidence in the functioning of the union in the coming year – then again, neither does not showing up to your own results announcement, noted as odd by the other elected sabbs.
I think that, as unfortunate as this result is, it only speaks to a wider disengagement with SU politics that needs to be addressed. Students’ Union UCL will no doubt flaunt that ours is the biggest student election in the country, with over 11,000 voting in a new record for UCL. Yet this is only a turnout of 23.77% – a starkly low number, despite the seemingly unprecedented number of posters around campus (particularly South Cloisters), and numerous anecdotes of candidates, or their friends, shoving QR codes in passer-by’s faces and forcing them to vote on the spot. When this is all it takes to get elected then it is no wonder unsuited and ‘lazy’ candidates like Aria are able to get through, despite being up against people who actually care and want to make change.
We should not be awarding laziness and inaction with a £30k salary. When students don’t realise what impact effective sabbatical officers can have, we end up in these situations, where someone can win a highly influential position with just 719 first preference votes out of a 50,000+ student body. I hope she manages to prove me wrong next year – but from what she has (or rather, hasn’t) achieved after 12 months in office, I can’t say I’m optimistic.