If municipal elections gave prizes for shady behavior, then Aug. 27’s would sweep it like an SGA campaign. And like an SGA campaign, the allegations are already piling up. Greek students allegedly signing up to vote in districts in which they don’t reside. Greek students allegedly being sent emails encouraging them to vote for a former SGA president and promising free drinks to those who went to the polls. Greek students allegedly registering to vote en masse, hoping to tip a local election toward a man with ties to PACS and the infamous Machine.

There is a complicated ethical question here to begin with: Do we, as UA students, have the right to vote in municipal elections? Most of us don’t actually live in Tuscaloosa. We live at The University of Alabama – a community that exists within the larger city but is in many ways detached from it. The University influences our daily lives far more than local government. Most of us will leave Tuscaloosa when we graduate, and very few of us will ever come back. Do we have the right, then, to participate in elections that don’t really concern or affect us?

I won’t pretend I have the answer to that. I can’t say for sure that the allegations of Machine-sponsored voter fraud are true. But if they are even the slightest bit accurate, then what has happened during the local school board election is thoroughly despicable.

Imagine participating in an election to decide the future of your child. Imagine watching it be hijacked by people who do not live in your community. Who hold themselves apart from your community. Who plan to leave your community when their four years are up, and who will never be affected by the choice they so blithely were told to make. A choice they are not educated about and must be drawn to through cheap enticement.

Were I a parent, I would be furious. If the students in the limousines were parents, then they would be furious. And the University, which claims to hold its students to a high social standard, should be furious as well. Because the leaked emails, the instagrammed pictures, the hired limousine, they all tell a story. They tell of a massive push by entitled children to elect someone who promised them candy; children who demonstrated a complete and utter contempt for democratic processes; children who never appear to have considered for a second whether what they were doing was wrong.

Are those the kind of students our greek system is producing? Students so nestled in a culture of corruption that all elections are functionally meaningless. Students to whom voting is a game. To whom voter fraud is a lark. Students who don’t realize that the drinks their votes bought have real consequences for real people?

Maybe there’s an explanation. Maybe our fraternities and sororities haven’t sunk to meddling with other people’s lives for alcohol at Innisfree. Maybe our fraternities and sororities aren’t actively subverting the town that is kind enough to host their college. Maybe this is all a horrible mistake.

Maybe. But how likely is that?

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