Greek scholars hope new law ends student anarchy on campuses

Academics in Greece hope that a controversial new law allowing police on campuses will cut crime and improve working conditions after decades of anarchic student behaviour that has seen scholars attacked and held hostage.

Students held weeks of protests against the education bill, which was passed by MPs on 11 February and will allow universities to establish their own security forces and enable specially trained local police to enter university grounds.

Police have long been barred from entering university grounds in Greece, a prohibition that followed the killing of several people during the Athens Polytechnic uprising against the military junta in 1973.

The bill also establishes a minimum entry requirement for university and a maximum graduation term, with most courses now requiring students to complete their degrees within six years.

Previously anyone, regardless of their academic record, could enter higher education, and there was no fixed time within which they had to graduate, leading to a phenomenon where some so-called eternal students remained enrolled in their sixties. According to academics, the lax rules meant that many young people who did not attend classes were still technically students and could therefore freely access campus buildings.

Scholars said that they hoped the law signalled a new era for higher education in the country.

Vasso Kindi, professor of philosophy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, said her office had been broken into twice and she was once held hostage by students, along with several visiting professors from the US, when they were members of the governing board of the University of Athens.

In October, the rector of the Athens University of Economics and Business was assaulted and held hostage in his office by a group of anarchists, who hung around his neck a sign expressing support for sit-in protests.

Professor Kindi said that students have repeatedly organised sit-ins that have lasted from weeks to six months, in protest against new institutional policies or for political reasons, and that many students and academics were “afraid to walk about on campus in the evening”.

The toleration shown towards this unruly student behaviour can be traced back to the end of the seven years of military rule in Greece in 1974, she explained.

“After the fall of the junta, students were held in very high regard because of their resistance against the military regime, and professors wouldn’t go against what students demanded because they were afraid that they would be criticised as collaborators of the junta,” Professor Kindi said.

“Then students’ unions developed ties with the political parties and often got involved in shady transactions in academic politics. Now professors are afraid to investigate or punish instances of any kind of bad behaviour because of what might happen afterwards.”

Professor Kindi was looking forward to the law improving conditions on campuses.

“We are putting our hopes on this measure. I don’t know what else can be done,” she said.

Loukas Vlahos, a physics professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, said the law did not address the fact that rectors are elected by faculty members (and, until recently, students), rather than appointed by a board – which meant that leaders were reluctant to intervene because they saw staff and students as their “constituents”.

Nevertheless, he said, the new legislation could solve many problems on Greek campuses, but whether it would be implemented was “a big if”.

“In the past, laws reforming universities have been passed with big majorities in parliament and ignored. I’m sceptical,” he said.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com