University of Alabama elects first black SGA president in four decades
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The University of Alabama Tuesday elected their first black Student Government Association president in almost four decades.
Elliot Spillers, a junior from Pelham, is also considered to be the first non-Machine candidate to win the election since John Merrill (now Alabama's Secretary of State) won in 1986.
This will be Spillers' first elected position within the SGA, where he has served appointed positions, most recently as deputy director of engagement.
The Machine?
What?
Considerations below the squiggly:
WTF is The Machine?
SGA Vice President for Student Affairs David Wilson first heard about the Machine, a secret political coalition of traditionally white fraternities and sororities at the University of Alabama, even before he arrived on campus as a freshman. Three years and two SGA elections later, even as he sits in a position for which he ran as a Machine-backed candidate, Wilson will admit that he has long had concerns about the organization and how it operates.
“If you grow up in Alabama and you go to UA, you’re going to hear about it,” Wilson said. “I remember doing research on the Machine when I was a senior in high school. It’s an important thing on our campus – you always hear about this thing at the center of our greek system, and I wanted to know what I was getting into.”
Wilson said that during this research, he read and heard about how the Machine controlled a bloc of greek voters. He read online about physical intimidation the organization had allegedly carried out in the past against those who didn’t agree with its choices, and he knew from people he’d talked to that the organization was real.
White Power. White Privilege. White Piles of Money sweated out from the backs of nonwhite people. The Old South.
The Machine appears to be a racist mob of goons and thugs and other ugly things that go bump in the night:
Over the past 30 years, the Machine — a secret society at the University of Alabama — has been suspected in cross burnings, election interference, and physical assaults on students. One former student blames the Machine for putting her under so much mental duress she was forced to transfer schools.
The 100-year-old organization has been the subject of many profiles and exposés, including a now-notorious 1992 Esquire cover story. According to Esquire, the Machine started out as a chapter of the Theta Nu Epsilon fraternity, which "believed that secrecy guaranteed selfless leadership. Logos showed a group of devils in hell, with flames licking around them. The fraternity's rites instilled secrecy with medieval earnestness."
Could it be that in light of recent events: the huge celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon scandal at the University of Oklahoma, could it be that the mighty
Machine is gasping its last?