Skimming through my phone in February, a news report caught my eye: a bodycam video, showing the blurred-out faces of shirtless young men my age, lined up against the desolate wall of a poorly lit basement.
I was confused and horrified. It was only until I saw the headline — “Video shows alleged hazing incident at University of Iowa” — that I suddenly stopped feeling much of anything at all besides lingering disgust. It then worried me just how much this didn’t shock me, once I figured out what it really was.
However, commenters raged. Parents were upset, shocked, disturbed. Other people my age reacted in similar ways. But hazing has become so commonplace on this campus that I’d been entirely desensitized to this sort of happening.
Like any upperclassman at the University, I know my way around the things the tour guides don’t tell you when you step foot on our sunny campus.
As much as we tend to normalize them in Tuscaloosa — hazing, dangerous drinking, intimidation and drug use are not typical college activities. The culture of an SEC college, combined with the consistent sweep-it-under-the-rug attitude towards offenses, has caused us to forget our empathy and humanity.
Signed into law on Dec. 23, 2024, the Stop Campus Hazing Act was meant to cut down on the incidents that have thrown a dark shadow over our Greek Life communities for years. But has it truly worked?
According to UA’s 2025 Hazing Transparency Report, some of the most recent incidents across various fraternities include underaged new members being “forced or coerced to consume alcohol and participate in drinking games leading to illness and/or injury,” being subjected to “personal servitude and degradation” and being “forced or coerced to participate in degrading and/or frustrating activities.”
This is not to say that alcohol use and parties are unusual, or inherently wrong when done safely. When you’re young and in the prime of your life, it’s not wrong of you to want to take advantage of that. But when our attitude towards safety changes to what’s seen as traditional on campus, we lose out on that and instead enforce generational issues.
It is also no secret that intimidation is a frequent issue within our student body.
Almost every student is aware of “The Machine” — a well-documented group of select historically white fraternities and sororities that seeks to control SGA and Homecoming elections. Originally founded to keep the white majority on Greek row, the April 1992 edition of Esquire Magazine described The Machine as “The Most Powerful Fraternity in America.”
Haven’t we changed, though? Hasn’t the University become more tolerant, more accepting and more free for students who have long felt undermined? Haven’t we finally taken action to stop the institutional racism that the Machine has long endorsed?
Unsurprisingly though, non-Machine students in SGA and across the greater campus community still face harassment.
Last year, after a candidate for Homecoming Queen was repeatedly harassed until she was forced to drop from the competition, the 2024-2025 Editorial Board of The Crimson White made its question clear — “When will the ‘UA policies and guidance’ meaningfully change to end voter intimidation for good?”
Now I’m asking a similar question: Where are our campus policies and our administration’s cooperation when it comes to The Machine?
It seems that no matter how many incidents are reported, no matter how many candidates drop out or refuse to run, no matter how many injuries are sustained due to hazing, the University has chosen to pretend as if these matters are insignificant unless taken to law enforcement.
Our University has more than its fair share of secrets — secrets that we often keep in the dark due to fear, shame or pure desensitization.
However, if we truly want to live up to our goal as the state’s Capstone, both our administration and our students must choose to start looking at these issues with real conviction, even when it seems inconvenient.
