Decline with no end in sight
The situation in Greece’s universities has reached a new all-time low. Presidential elections at the Athens University of Economics and Business yesterday were marred by violence between members of rival student parties. Members of PASP, the PASOK-affiliated student party, assaulted officials of the electoral committee and ran away with ballot boxes, interrupting the process. It’s about time that the ruling PASOK socialists and New Democracy, the conservative opposition party, reined in the behavior of their student parties, which have repeatedly violated all sense of democracy and lawfulness. As for the university professors, they too ought to mobilize and call for measures that will put an end to the bullying tactics and violence of misguided student leaders. If they fail to take this necessary action and if they continue to tolerate these unprecedented phenomena, they will also be directly responsible for the looming demise of the country’s state universities.
