Faces of UCL

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Michael Spence: Welcome to faces of UCL, where we uncover many stories from around University College London. I'm Michael Spence, UCL's President and Provost, and I'm excited to bring you conversations with some of the remarkable people who contribute to our vibrant University community. This podcast's a window into the people and the stories that make UCL the special place it is. Well, this week, I'm talking with Goksu Danaci, who's the president of the UCL Student Union. Now, President, that's a new title. Isn't it?

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah.

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Michael Spence: Are you the first or second or third or something, president?

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Goksu Danaci: Third woman president.

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Michael Spence: The third woman president, because before that it was called?

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Goksu Danaci: Union Affairs Officer. Then even before that, just various other titles.

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Michael Spence: Yeah, because the Union has a very proud history at UCL. It's also a bit of a funny beast, right, because it does student representation, and runs a large on campus services business.

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah.

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Michael Spence: It does student clubs and societies. It does student volunteering. It provides welfare and hardship services. How do you keep all of that going at once and your head across it? You must have a remarkable team of sabbs.

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah, we do. I'm going to name drop all of them. As the president, I think my role basically is to be that spokesperson, and what I do every day is just attending meetings, either within the Union or at UCL. It's, I think, just about maintaining that good relationship we have with the school.

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Michael Spence: Yes.

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Goksu Danaci: I think I'm the lead person to do that. Then we have our Education Officer, Shaban, for example, looking after the academic aspects of student life, being in touch with academic representatives, for example, we have Darcy, our Postgraduate Officer, taking care of the postgraduate students. Eda, the Equity and Inclusion Officer, looks after student representation. Rachel looks after the welfare of the students, being the Welfare and Community Officer and Anna, our superstar, looks after the clubs and societies, being the Activities and Engagement Officer.

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Michael Spence: People don't tend to run on tickets, right? People run because they're passionate about each of these different things. Then your job is to turn them into a team.

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah. Exactly. Why I essentially ran for this was because I thought I could do it. I have the power to do it. Let me do it.

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Michael Spence: Yeah. That's the best reason and it's the product of a remarkable process of student democracy, because by the time this podcast goes live, we'll have a new sabbatical team, the product of a whole... About how many people vote or students vote in elections at UCL?

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Goksu Danaci: We again held the biggest student elections in the UK.

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Michael Spence: Wow.

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Goksu Danaci: I think it's three years in a row now. I think that's a huge success.

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Michael Spence: It's something like north of 20,000 students who vote in one way or another. Because not just the sabbs, it's also the over 2000 academic reps that represent the student voice on courses and in departments and faculties.

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Goksu Danaci: Not just them either, it's the club or society committees, part-time student officers, for example, an arts officer, societies officer.

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Michael Spence: So student democracy is alive and well at UCL?

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Goksu Danaci: Oh yeah!

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Michael Spence: One of the things I have to say, I've worked in universities of different kinds and in different parts of the world. One of the things that's really impressive about UCL is the way that the student voice is really taken into decision making, but also the ways in which the sabbatical officers, in particular, are able to balance the demands of being a part of university decision making, but also having a representative role. That can't always be easy.

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Goksu Danaci: I think keeping the balance is the most difficult thing for me because essentially, what I do, like I said, is to maintain that relationship we have. I sit in UCL committees because I'm a trustee for UCL as well, so I wear two hats. I think whenever I negotiate behind closed doors, it's a bit difficult to get that out in the student media, for example.

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Michael Spence: It's a big responsibility for someone, without sounding like a crusty old man, it's a big responsibility for somebody who's 22 and a great preparation for a leadership career of one kind or another.

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah. Definitely.

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Michael Spence: What's the most tricky part of the role?

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Goksu Danaci: I think managing expectations. The student body, we essentially represent over 52,000 people. Some people like me, some people don't like me, some people agree with what I say and some don't. I think it's interesting having your face being seen in public.

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Michael Spence: Yes. The first time you get really significant criticism in a role like this? That must really sting.

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Goksu Danaci: That did. It was before I went to COP to be fair. I was in Azerbaijan looking at what students were saying, and I was alone and didn't know what to do. Going to the United Nations Conference, waking up every day in a city, I don't know.

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Michael Spence: Yes.

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Goksu Danaci: It felt really surreal. But it does teach you many things in life, I mean.

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Michael Spence: You've had an international experience. You're originally from Turkey?

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Goksu Danaci: Yes.

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Michael Spence: But you came to the UK in the last couple of years of school?

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah.

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Michael Spence: How did you choose UCL?

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Goksu Danaci: I did my A levels. I went to boarding school in the UK. I was just 17 when I came here, and I was in the countryside, right. For me, I missed Istanbul, but at the same time, I didn't really want to go back. So the closest thing to me was London, I think. I was always drawn into London institutions. I had a friend at UCL and they just gave me a tour. It wasn't anything planned. But as soon as I saw the Portico, I just felt like, okay, I belong here. Let me apply to this institution. Why not?

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Michael Spence: It's a magical building, and it's a funny old building. Because when it was first built, it was very radical. Here's this public stock company putting up this ridiculous building, saying, we are a real university, even though the whole world is against us. Now it can look a bit establishment. I think there's a tricky thing there for UCL, isn't it? In how we cherish our tradition, but also meet the challenge of being constantly relevant, constantly pushing boundaries in the way that was so much a part of our founding ethos. But there's also a pluralism that was a part of our founding ethos. Without being overly simplistic, Istanbul is a city where the whole world has historically met.

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah.

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Michael Spence: It is geographically the place where Europe and Asia meets as well as the rest. London is like that, and of course, UCL has a particular pluralism. How do you serve the needs of so diverse a student community?

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Goksu Danaci: As the sabbatical team, we try and speak to as many students as we can on campus. I think it's just about hearing the voices of who you represent. Some people in leadership aren't able to do that, whoever they're representing, they might not be in touch with the expectations, etc. I think it's not just the sabb team, even, the professional staff we have within the Union, the full time staff. Even they know what some student groups want, and they're able to manage that. I think that's how we deal with a student body of this extent, really.

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Michael Spence: Because it is a remarkable diversity. Last night, I was in an event with the Islamic Society, and of course, the women were in one part of the building and the men in another. For others of our students, the whole notion of there being two genders is extremely problematic. Sometimes you'd think that it'd get a whole lot more fraught than it does. But somehow at UCL, we seem to find a way of rubbing along together. What's the secret sauce there? How does that work in the Union?

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Goksu Danaci: The secret sauce to that is, it's a very fundamental thing. It's just about being nice. As student leaders, we always try to empower all the students we meet, and just listen to them, hear what they're saying, and try and be nice. I think that's the secret sauce. I don't know what's the word for that.

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Michael Spence: I think nice is a highly underrated virtue.

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Goksu Danaci: I know.

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Michael Spence: And the world could do with a little bit more nice. But it's more than niceness. The Union has consciously put effort into bridging the potential divides between different sorts of students with a pretty extensive intercultural engagement programme, by being a part of the university's disagreeing well activity, with its impartial chairing programme for events. What has being at UCL been like for you as a Turkish student? How has UCL been a place for you to reflect on what it means to be Turkish?

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Goksu Danaci: I've been the President of the Turkish Society before, and I think I have a community at UCL. It's really interesting because UCL is able to attract people from all over the country, and you would only expect it to attract people coming from big cities, per se, but that's not the case, and I find that really interesting. I really like that. UCL gives us that space to be the representatives of our cultures, I think. What I was trying to do was to create a Turkish community at UCL, but also to tell more about my culture to other students. I tried to throw events with different cultural societies just to get that intercultural exchange in the minds of students, really.

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Michael Spence: Did you meet people at UCL from Turkey whom you wouldn't have met in Istanbul?

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah. I found my best friends through UCL. If it wasn't for UCL, I don't think I'd ever get to meet them in Turkey.

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Michael Spence: People from the countryside or?

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Goksu Danaci: I mean, we have a lot of cities. You can't really make a comparison, countryside versus the city. But from different cities.

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Michael Spence: You come from a secular Muslim family?

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah.

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Michael Spence: Presumably, you've also engaged with varieties of Islam at UCL that you might not have engaged with in Turkey. How's that been?

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Goksu Danaci: That's been interesting to be fair. Our cultures do have an impact on how we perceive religion, and seeing different perceptions has been interesting. I've attended a few iftars last year, I was in touch with the Islamic Society, and it's been great, really.

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Michael Spence: Being at UCL, in a funny way has made you think differently about your own heritage to what would have happened if you'd stayed in Istanbul and gone to university?

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah. Especially, studying politics and sociology at UCL. I think that's also added to the whole existential crisis!

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Michael Spence: I'm sure! That's the funny thing, isn't it? So much about being a university student is about existential crisis and existential growth?

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Goksu Danaci: Yes, existential growth would be a better term for that.

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Michael Spence: Well, it's about seeing things from a new perspective. In a way that makes you perhaps reaffirm some things that you hold very dear and question other things that perhaps you hold dear. What's next for Goksu? What thing do you go on to do next? What have past Union Presidents gone on to do?

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Goksu Danaci: They've always went for roles that required them to show their leadership skills, whether it be in different sectors, finance, joining the professional services departments of their institutions. It could be anything to do with the academia, although I think Union people never just become researchers or anything. It's more so managerial roles that people have gone for in the past. I've met previous Students' Union presidents from the 1970s, which is interesting.

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Michael Spence: If you had my job for a day, what would you do? Not my job, as it really is, my job as it is, theoretically.

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Goksu Danaci: But I know who you are!

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Michael Spence: If you can make things happen at UCL, what would you do? What should UCL be doing to improve the support that it offers for students?

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Goksu Danaci: I think it's to do with the structure of UCL, because it's such a big institution that sometimes things get lost in transition. I mean that in a constructive way, not to criticise what we have, but I would say if some, and I'm going to call them departments, although it's not just that. If people could be more in touch with what the other is doing, I think that would also help with this uni experience.

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Michael Spence: Yeah. There's something here about fragmentation all up, isn't there?

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Goksu Danaci: Which is nice, but sometimes it makes everything a bit more difficult bureaucratically.

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Michael Spence: Yeah. I mean, I think that the point is living in a big diverse organisationally devolved community, you have to be better at listening to the other person than you probably do in some other types of organisation or community. That's where I think things like your impartial chair programme is really interesting. Tell us a bit about that.

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Goksu Danaci: That's essentially to train and develop and support students to become impartial chairs, because chairing means facilitating discussion, and if you're not impartial, it's a bit one sided.

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Michael Spence: Because you have speaker events involving people from all over with a huge range of views, don't you?

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Goksu Danaci: I think it's a valuable thing to do to empower students in that respect.

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Michael Spence: So, two hundred years next year for us.

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah, so excited. I wish I could still be a sabb.

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Michael Spence: If you were to come back in 200 years, what would you really hope had been preserved about the UCL of today?

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Goksu Danaci: Like you said before, modernity versus tradition.

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Michael Spence: Yeah.

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Goksu Danaci: I think some people perceive UCL as a very modern, new institution. Even though it is, in some respects, I think we need to cherish our traditions and the history as well. The pluralism aspect you always like to mention, even outside of this podcast room.

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Michael Spence: Yeah.

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Goksu Danaci: I really value that. I think, we need to hold on to that a bit more and remind people why UCL was established and how it's developed over the course of 200 years culturally.

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Michael Spence: No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I suppose my feeling is that there's something special about a place that can bring together people from 160 countries and very radically different cultures, and have a community ethos where basically people get along and that's something we really need to treasure and guard. The Union is a really important part of that in the way that it works between cultures and in the way that it, as you say, empowers students wherever they're from and whatever they're doing.

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Goksu Danaci: Yeah. At the end of the day, I think we're your student experience partners, and when I say we, the Union, you, the university, even though I feel like I'm the middleman between both. I really like my role for that.

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Michael Spence: Well, all the best for the next phase of your career, and long may UCL be the remarkably diverse and interesting place that it is.

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Goksu Danaci: It will be. Thank you.

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Michael Spence: Thank you very much. Next on faces of UCL, we'll be talking to alumna Achala Moulik on everything ranging from the values she developed during her time at UCL to how she used those during her career as Secretary of Elementary Education and Literacy for India, to how UCL features in her upcoming novel.