Editorial Ta Nea: University police force plan on the back burner

This time it was not a university rector who was humiliated or a professor who was beaten up, as has occurred in the past.

Yet, the damage wrought with sledgehammers over the weekend by a group of antiauthoritarians at the Aristotle University, at a location where the construction of a library is planned, is not a lesser assault to legality, education, democracy, and public property.

Ta Nea has repeatedly underlined the need for decisive action to root out violence at Greek universities, which was a key plank in ruling New Democracy’s 2019 electoral platform.

One of the measures that has been announced, which is absolutely necessary though not the most pleasant, is the creation of a university police force that will act both as a deterrent and coercively when warranted.

The government has dragged its feet on this controversial reform, however, and then it was blocked in the court system. Now, no one knows what is going on. The plan seems to have been put on the back burner and it is in danger of being abandoned.

Everyone bears a share of responsibility for acts of violence and lawlessness at our universities.

That includes professors who do not dare to speak out, students who are not sensitised to the problem, the police which is not doing its job, and opposition parties that are content with merely issuing hypocritical press releases.

Yet, it is the government that bears the greatest responsibility.

“It is time to take daring action so that universities can become what they should be – a place devoted to teaching, dialogue, innovation, and the dissemination of ideas” Ta Nea’s editorial stressed a few months ago.

We owe it to our children.