Societies have raised concerns over procedural issues with elections for student groups as 1,189 posts – or 55% – had no candidates standing.
An investigation by Roar can reveal that there were no candidates standing for 1,189 positions within student groups in this year’s KCLSU elections. One in four societies had no candidates standing for any roles, with more than half of all posts remaining unfilled.
Over 400 of the vacant posts were for either president or treasurer, with 187 unfilled president posts and 228 unfilled treasurer posts. According to Clause 15.3.3 of KCLSU’s Bye-Laws, each Student Group must have a President or Chair as well as a Treasurer – without them, a society may be de-ratified. Two thirds of societies (264) lacked nominations for one of these two posts.
Speaking to Roar, multiple societies have confirmed that they had difficulties standing candidates who should have been eligible to stand, with some members being told they were not allowed to run for posts they were eligible for.
One issue may partially stem from the fact that students are unable to run for positions if they only hold committee memberships, as they must also hold standard memberships. Some societies reported that they had an issue where members had a membership but not the ‘correct’ one.
One student claimed that the KCLSU website was incorrectly displaying active memberships for society committee members who had not purchased one – leading some to mistakenly believe membership was not required in their role. As a result, those individuals were unable to stand for more senior positions within their societies.
A sports club committee member told Roar they had been caught out by the same issue.
“I would like to run again next year, but it was not made clear enough that I had to actively purchase a membership for the club in order to run again — especially given that, as a committee member, you don’t have to have bought a membership to be part of the club,” they said.
The source said they had reviewed all election-related emails sent to community leaders and found that these “only stated that members of the society or club could run,” without specifying that current committee members were required to purchase a membership.
When they raised the issue with KCLSU, they said the Union told them “there was nothing they could do and that everyone was informed to buy a membership,” and advised them to stand in the by-elections instead.
“I responded back saying that I did not agree and that it was [the SU’s] error,” the source said. “But again they were unable to let me run.”
Alarmingly, last year’s elections also saw a high number of vacancies. The student also said a friend had faced a similar situation, where they were unable to run in last year’s elections.
Katie, the Anime and Manga Society’s social secretary said, “Our whole committee has had this issue. Our membership is a one-time payment, and we’ve never been asked to renew our memberships.
“So when nominations opened, none of us could run due to ineligibility.”
She continued, “KCLSU told us that it was because we didn’t have membership outside of the committee membership, however, upon checking our society’s own internal records, all of us are listed.
“They did not fix this issue and told us we would all have to stand in April [for the by-elections], but we are clueless about how renewing our memberships is supposed to work when, according to our own records, we are already members.”
Katie further remarked, “It’s very poor on [the part of the KCLSU] to not notify any of us about this”, and stated that she had tried appealing the decision and filing a complaint.
“I was the one who reached out [on behalf of the Society] to the KCLSU elections team. After showing the proof that I had been listed as a member they did not follow up and suggested I try in the by-election.”
She clarified that she had tried appealing, and that KCLSU “effectively did nothing”.
The president and treasurer of the Anime and Manga Society echoed her concerns.
Multiple societies have also reported other issues where people may have incorrectly been deemed ineligible to run owing to procedural errors on the part of the KCLSU, the president of one society stated that it has been a major problem to the point that they were considering starting a petition.
Another stated they had run into issues where members had nominated themselves for a position on the KCLSU website but were not appearing as a candidate to vote for as part of the elections, even though they were eligible to run for that position.
A student in the Amateur Boxing Club outlined several irregularities with the elections process.
The first concerned membership eligibility:
“Only members that had bought a yearly or term 2 membership were allowed to run – people who had only bought a term 1 membership were not allowed to run, even though term 2 had only just started,” they said.
They added that this was particularly frustrating given that they had “made sure to ask KCLSU at the beginning of the year if this was going to be a problem,” and were explicitly told it would not be, as “their system doesn’t differentiate between term 1 and term 2 memberships, so anyone that bought any type of membership [would] be able to run.”
The source also reported that “the Men’s Captain position did not appear in the list of nominations,” though this was corrected after club leadership raised the issue. A further problem was that “the manifesto for one of the candidates did not even appear on the website even though [they] had submitted it.”
A source within the KCLSU said that the Students’ Union had “failed” to tell people to buy their membership “yet again”.
KCLSU did not respond to a request for comment.
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