As a UA alum and proud Malleteer, I was shocked, though not the least bit surprised, to hear of Mari Baroff’s experience on the steps of Palmer Hall at the hands of some intoxicated and entitled pledges (“Harassment of Mallet enters new realm,” October 21). Same as it ever was, when fellow Malleteer Cleo Thomas became the first nonwhite SGA president in 1976, the Machine burned crosses. While I was at the University in 1993, candidate Minda Riley was assaulted in her home. There is nothing new under the sun.

However, this neo-barbarism has reached a new, nationwide audience thanks to the protests over sorority discrimination a few weeks ago. Across the nation, Americans who knew nothing of The University of Alabama but football now know two things:

1. The greek system at The University of Alabama is one of the last unapologetic bastions of institutionalized racism, xenophobia and white entitlement remaining in 21st century America.

2. The image of the protest carried throughout the news-reading world is one of young men and women in jerseys of Mallet blue literally carrying the banner of equality.

Not only has the dirty little family secret of your faux-Klan activities now reached a nationwide audience, but to add well-deserved insult to well-deserved injury, the Mallet Assembly is seen in the eyes of the nation as your antithesis, and everything that is right about our alma mater. No amount of drunken harassment of defenseless women will change that now. Your way is finished. Your day is done. You have lost.

In time, the petty dictatorship you have thus enjoyed will be no more than a faint memory in the minds of the Alabama family, and your pathetic Machine will be but a footnote. May future students wonder what it was in the same way they wonder what Franklin Hall once looked like.

Joe Day is a 1997 graduate of The University of Alabama.