On March 11, 2014, Machine candidate Hamilton Bloom was elected president of the SGA. Nor was he the only mechanized candidate to do so. Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of the Machine’s creation, and as if to celebrate the occasion, Theta Nu Epsilon’s entire manufactured slate installed itself, wholesale, into the executive positions of student government. A clean sweep, if you’re willing to bend a bit on the definition of the word “clean.”
Before I go any further, though, I’d like to congratulate Hamilton on his election. I don’t know him personally, but I’ve heard from people I trust that he’s a decent man and a competent politician. It’s sad that his win is tainted by his affiliation with the Machine because he’s the kind of candidate who could have won on his own merit.
But this campus is an environment where candidates, even qualified ones, rarely win on account of their own merit. Why be good at a rigged game? It’s much easier to attach yourself to a rusting gravy train, one running on a track thick with the scent of blood and burning crosses. With no need for real competition, there is no need for real innovation. With no need for innovation, the greater problems that beset our campus fester. Those with power have not earned it. Those who must use it have no concept of its value.
I don’t write this in anger, because there comes a time when anger cools. For nearly four years I’ve watched the Machine take election after election, including a bonus municipal one, and at some point all my passion burned itself down to coals. I suspect there are many like me all across campus, graduating seniors and newly arrived freshmen alike. It’s easy to feel as if nothing can change.
I know the work will not be easy. It will be hard, and it will be grueling. It’s a difficult task we have set for ourselves, but it can be done. The right candidate exists, though they may not know it yet. The right team exists, though they haven’t yet gathered. The ground is shifting underfoot, as the student body swells with people unaware of the status quo and ready to change it. Nearly 4,000 more people voted in 2014 than they did the year before, and most of them voted for independent candidates.
Change does not come quickly. The Machine is a rusty, entrenched thing, the accumulation of a hundred years of secrecy and corruption, and it will not be moved in a night. We cannot melt it with our rage. We cannot break it with our passion. We burn out trying. So the fire has to go toward something different.
Instead of trying to melt, we have to forge. Out of our anger, we forge resolve. Out of our passion, we forge connection. Beneath the flame is iron. Beneath the glow, the bitter steel. While the Machine stagnates in smug victory, we build the tools that will take it apart.
On March 11, 2014, the Machine won an election. It did not win the future. That, as always, is up to us.
Asher Elbein is a senior in New College. His column run biweekly.
