On Monday, the very day when Kelly Horwitz filed a brief alleging fraud in the Tuscaloosa municipal elections, we woke to find our residence halls covered in fliers. Each purported to be an announcement for a public meeting held by Theta Nu Epsilon, and each was emblazoned with a pair of crossed keys and a grinning skull. The Machine apparently was going on a recruitment drive, and the whole campus was invited.

Honestly, that’s what should have tipped everybody off that it was a hoax. The free pizza and beer was pretty obvious, sure, and the UA Still Stands hashtag was a dead giveaway. But the real sign was the laughable idea that the Machine has any interest in mixing with the rest of the campus. The Machine reacts to inclusivity like a cockroach reacts to the bathroom light: a hurried dash into shadows and a frantic squeeze into the slimiest crack it can find.

Theta Nu Epsilon doesn’t hand out refreshments unless you buy them with votes. Theta Nu Epsilon doesn’t want the whole campus to show up to anything. Theta Nu Epsilon doesn’t care about what you have to say.

Here’s what Theta Nu Epsilon does care about: In 1976, cloaked men burned crosses on sorority lawns after Cleo Thomas – to this day our only black SGA president – beat the Machine-backed candidate. In 1986, members of the Machine broke into an independent candidate’s office and left one of his staffers in the hospital after he was allegedly jumped outside his dormitory. In 1993, a candidate running against the Machine was attacked with a knife. In 2004, a freshman from a Machine sorority was driven off campus by threats, including a warning she related to The Crimson White: “You ****ed up the day you decided to start thinking against us.” In 2013, a formerly Machine-backed candidate for the Tuscaloosa Board of Education elections won with an overwhelmingly greek vote – votes that are now being challenged as coerced at best and fraudulent at worst.

Much of the above isn’t proven, of course. It’s hard to make things stick to the Machine. It’s hard to get them to even acknowledge their own existence. Theta Nu Epsilon is, after all, a secret society. It works best in the dark, with secret meetings and secret ballots and secret emails. If the Machine were real, its members would have to account for their behavior. They would have to take responsibility.

You know, I was going to write something sarcastic this week. I was going to have a little fun with this. But this is both too serious and too pathetic to make fun of. Our campus is run by children playing at cloak-and-dagger politics. They will go off into the world having learned that corruption is acceptable, accountability is for other people and you can get away with anything if you just keep quiet whenever you’re caught breaking society’s rules.

So we wake up in the aftermath of a stolen election with fake fliers everywhere. Theta Nu Epsilon says nothing. But its silence says everything.

Asher Elbein is a senior in New College. His column runs biweekly on Thursdays.