The Machine - 1992 and Suspension of The SGA

1992 and Suspension of The SGA

In 1992, Phi Mu sorority member Minda Riley (daughter of former Alabama Governor Bob Riley) ran against Machine-backed candidate and Beta Theta Pi fraternity member Neil Duthie. In that election, Minda Riley made claims of harassment and physical assault, even though she belonged to a Machine-aligned sorority. Although her claims of alleged harassment and physical assault were never verified and remain unproven, the University nevertheless suspended the Student Government Association altogether, and did not reinstitute it until 1996. Minda Riley's brother Rob Riley was elected president of the SGA as a Machine candidate.

In 1999 African American Fabien Zinga-Kanza, a candidate for the SGA presidency, claimed that he was personally threatened and that his campaign signs were defaced. CNN covered the story, with references to the alleged history of intimidation attributed to the Machine.

Prior to the 2002 SGA election, the phrase "Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine" from Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience" was chalked on the outer wall of the Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library. This caused a group of students, calling themselves "The Counter-friction," to interrupt then university president Andrew Sorenson's epidemiology class while chanting words of protest against The Machine. Dr. Sorenson resigned his post soon after.

Internet voting debuted in 2003, but the results were ruled invalid after allegations of fraud and the election was repeated with paper ballots the following week. During the next election in 2004 SGA senate candidate Emeline Aviki, a member of Chi Omega who openly refused to be affiliated with the Machine, detailed the alleged harassment she received for the Crimson White, which used it for an exposé entitled "You don't want to mess with us." Though Aviki's campaign was successful, "the emotional and psychological toll the event caused" led her to transfer to Duke University where she went on to serve as Class President.