NEWS

Report about campus prompts ND criticism

Report about campus prompts ND criticism

The publication of a report by an expert committee on lawlessness at Greek universities sparked a vehement political exchange on Thursday, with conservative New Democracy slamming the recommendations as uninspired and inadequate. 

The report, which was compiled by a 12-member committee led by former justice minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos, made a series of recommendations ranging from removing ATMs from campus sites to training university managers to negotiate with the organizers of sit-ins. 

In a post on his Twitter account, ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis described the government as “ideologically fixated and hopeless,” saying that an ND-led administration would “purge universities of gangs and return them to students and their professors.” 

A statement issued by the party’s shadow education and citizens’ protection ministers, Niki Kerameus and Maximos Harakopoulos, dismissed the report’s proposals as “tragic” and said it failed to underline the “self-evident” need for authorities to intervene in the event of all crimes on campus. 

Leftist SYRIZA said ND’s comments revealed the conservative party’s “authoritarian view of public education” and accused Mitsotakis of proposing a police state which would not solve the problem of lawlessness on university campuses. 

Paraskevopoulos, for his part, said ND’s criticism was groundless and malicious.

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