THE MACHINE

FOUNDED: 1905

STATUS: This University of Alabama institution survives to this day.

EXCLUSIVITY FACTOR: Members must first be accepted into the “right” fraternity or sorority, and then appointed to represent their chapter in the Machine.

SECRECY FACTOR: It’s known that the group wields great influence on and off campus, but the members and meeting place of the Machine are unknown to most, even to their fellow Greeks.

THREAT FACTOR: Medium—It may not seem like a big deal to control the outcome of student government and homecoming queen elections, but the use of scare tactics to intimidate non-Machine candidates is disturbing.

QUIRK FACTOR: About as “quirky” as a Confederate flag.

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

Fraternities and sororities have a lot of influence on some college campuses—but in Alabama, that influence extends to local and even national politics, thanks to a secret society called The Machine. The group began in 1905 as a rogue chapter of Theta Nu Epsilon at the University of Alabama, and it acts as the political arm for a select group of fraternities and sororities. The endorsement of The Machine is almost essential to being elected to the university’s Student Government Association (SGA), but beyond that, it has been the starting point for the careers of US senators, congressmen, and many prominent doctors, lawyers, and businessmen.

Before the Machine existed, University of Alabama’s fraternity members would compete for campus leadership positions in a ruthless manner unbefitting of Southern gentlemen. So, the boys of Theta Nu Epsilon came up with a way to make the process more civilized: They would seek out students with potential while they were sophomores and then appoint them to the various leadership roles in school organizations. The hush-hush manner in which this was done gave the Machine, as the group became known, a reputation as a secret society that has operated as a sort of shadow government on campus ever since.

The group’s most blatant display of power is stacking the student government with Machine-approved candidates. The Machine makes it known to the many fraternities and sororities under its sway who should get their vote. With the numbers drawn from the Greek system, independent candidates are at a severe disadvantage. The Machine almost always wins.

Winning candidates sitting on student government may sow the seeds for post-collegiate leadership positions, but they also serve the Machine’s purposes by having people on the inside at the university supporting its agenda. Over the years, this agenda has been rather sinister at times—the Machine opposed campus integration, and when a black man named Cleo Thomas got elected as president of the Student Government Association in 1976, crosses were burned in response.

Thomas had actually managed to beat the election odds thanks to the support of the sororities on campus, who, up until that point, were not officially part of the Machine. After that, Theta Nu Epsilon made room for representatives from the sororities, thus preventing any future backing of independent candidates. When Minda Riley, an independent, ran for SGA president in 1993, she was attacked at night by a knife-wielding masked man and was sent a chilling note reminding her: “Machine rules, bitch.”

The Machine now steers clear of making statements with violence, but they are still a force to be reckoned with. In 2013, the Machine became involved with local politics in their college town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. One of their own, Cason Kirby, a former student government association president, was running for Tuscaloosa City Board of Education, so the proud Greeks of the U of A left campus en masse to cast their votes. This raised controversy and allegations of voter fraud when Kirby’s opponent uncovered evidence that some of the voters might have been ineligible. But the Machine that has been working for over a hundred years just keeps chugging along.

MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS

First and foremost, to become a representative in the Machine, one must be a part of Theta Nu Epsilon or one of the other more prestigious fraternities or sororities at the University of Alabama. Those particular Greeks are usually from reputable, white Southern families—it’s rare to find northern newcomers or people of color in their “Old Row” mansions. A pair of representatives from each of these fraternities and sororities is secretly tapped to “go downstairs for the house” or “go underground”—code for becoming a rep in the Machine. But if asked, these chosen few will most likely deny that the Machine even exists, and many Greeks are unaware of who even represents them in the secret society.

INSIDE THE MACHINE

The representatives of the Machine meet weekly in an undisclosed location. Rumor has it they used to meet in a gravel pit or in the woods near an old Confederate train tunnel, but when those possible locations were revealed in a magazine article years back, they chose a better-hidden headquarters.

At their meetings, they discuss their appointee choices for student government, homecoming queen, and other honors societies. When election day rolls around, the Machine provides transportation to the polls. Frat boys and sorority girls pile into their party buses and limos, where a Machine rep might hand them a beer and tell them who to vote for. Theta Nu Epsilon throws a big-budget after-party for the voters. Some of the Greeks reportedly impose fines on their non-voting brothers and sisters.

But what may be more interesting than what goes on inside the Machine is what happens to University of Alabama students outside of it. Fewer than one third of the student body is in Machine-controlled organizations, and many of the other students are fed up with the disproportionate power structure. In 1989, when independent candidate Joey Viselli lost his student government association presidential bid to the Greeks by a small margin, there was thought to be corruption. However, the administration refused to hold another election. In the bitter aftermath, business plummeted at Joey’s father’s local pizza shop. The place had been popular with the Greek chapters, but after the election kerfuffle, the Machine staged a boycott and soon the pizza shop was out of business. The message: Cross the Machine, and you just might get chewed up in the gears.

HAZED AND ABUSED

At many schools, hazing is rampant, especially among the Greeks. Incoming pledges are required to perform humiliating and dangerous stunts, often under the influence of a lot of alcohol, all in the name of belonging to the group. Though hazing is illegal in forty-four states, it still goes on—and sometimes leads to terrible consequences.

SIGMA ALPHA EPSILON, CORNELL UNIVERSITY

In 2011, fraternity member George Desdunes was “kidnapped” by pledges as part of an initiation ritual. While blindfolded, with wrists and ankles bound by zip ties and duct tape, Desdunes and a fellow “captive” were asked trivia questions and forced to do a shot of vodka for every wrong answer. They were also fed a noxious combination of Pixy Stix, chocolate powder, strawberry syrup, and hot sauce. When he passed out, Desdunes’s frat brothers tried to carry him to bed, but then opted to leave him in the fraternity library, where he was found dead the next morning. Three students were charged with hazing in the first degree and unlawfully dealing with a child (meaning serving alcohol to a person under 21). To the great dismay of Desdunes’s family and friends, his assailants were acquitted of these misdemeanors.

CHI TAU, CHICO STATE UNIVERSITY

It was “Hell Week” of 2005 on the campus of California’s Chico State University—and things were about to get very hellish indeed for Chi Tau pledge Matthew Williams. He was brought to the dungeon-like cellar of the frat house, where the walls were scribbled with the phrase “In the basement, no one can hear you scream.” Once inside, he was forced to do calisthenics on a floor that was covered in raw sewage, all while being taunted by the already established fraternity members. As this was going on, Carrington was also forced to drink from a five-gallon jug of water as fans churned frigid air throughout the room. In response, Carrington eventually urinated and vomited on himself before suffering a seizure. He was pronounced dead on the scene when the ambulance arrived. The cause of death was water intoxication, which caused the swelling of his brain and lungs. Alcohol can of course be quite dangerous in this kind of a setting, but this episode shows that even sober hazing rituals can produce terrible results.

SIGMA ALPHA EPSILON, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

Dartmouth provided the real-life inspiration for the classic college comedy Animal House, so it comes as no surprise that fraternities at the Ivy League college partake in some raucous initiation rites. But Sigma Alpha Epsilon went overboard, according to former member Andrew Lohse. In a 2012 oped in the college newspaper, he revealed that in order to be a brother, pledges were made to perform a variety of dehumanizing and stomach-turning tasks, such as “swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit (called “vomlets”); chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks.” Lohse reported these abuses to the administration and encouraged them to overhaul the Greek system. For this, he became a pariah, shunned by his former frat brothers. But his efforts were not all for naught, as Dartmouth has recently formed a task force on hazing.

ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA, CAL STATE LOS ANGELES

The boys aren’t the only ones getting brutalized—some sororities have initiations just as intense. In 2007, students Kristin High and Kenitha Saafir were pledging Alpha Kappa Alpha, a weeks-long process culminating with a trip to the beach, which involved doing hours of calisthenics on the sand and then walking backward towards the ocean. Kenitha was swept out by a wave, and Kristin went after her. Both girls drowned. The sorority swears that it had nothing to do with it, but it is suspected to be a hazing incident. Still, no charges were bought against anyone in the deaths of these two young women.

If you or someone you know has a problem with hazing, call the Anti-Hazing Hotline at 1-888-NOT-HAZE.