A group of anti-establishment protesters who yesterday briefly occupied the offices of the rector of the National Technical University of Athens have clashed with the rector over what constitutes university asylum.

The protesters occupied the office of Constantinos Moutzouris yesterday morning in protest at the arrest late Saturday of 30 people who had been attending a party on a student campus in Zografou, eastern Athens, where university property was reportedly vandalized. Police entered the grounds as the asylum law barring their presence was lifted at Moutzouris’s request. Of the detainees, all released early Sunday, only five were students, police said.

The protesters condemned the rector’s move and said the asylum law should never be lifted again. Moutzouris retorted that “squatters” had exploited university premises to “vandalize, steal and threaten.”